Vina Escaped II: Chaps 1 and 2
by Richard T. Green
Summary: Captain Kirk helps Star Trek's first mysterious beauty, as the keepers spread across the galaxy in this sequel.
1. Chapter 1

_Vina Escaped II: Green Blood, Red Blood_

**VINA ESCAPED II**

"_Green Blood, Red Blood"_

_By Richard T. Green_

A Note From The Author

I've always felt a little sad that some of the most interesting characters in the 1960's TV series "Star Trek" always met endings that seemed less than happy, to me. Call it the "Tasha Yar Problem," if you like. Maybe brainy women, misfit captains and others were too far "ahead of their time," even for Star Trek.

Foremost among these unfortunates may have been Vina—the blond beauty from the original pilot episode, _"The Cage" _– whose dilemma was recycled into the two-part story, _"The Menagerie,"_ in the show's first season. I never understood why she stayed behind, on Talos IV, after the _Enterprise _answered that call for help.

This new book is "part two" of her return. She comes back (along with thousands of escaped telepaths) in an imaginary "fourth season," that might have aired in 1969-70, had the TV series not been cancelled of course. I can't swear this is the absolute conclusion of her saga, but you could say all the loose ends are pretty well tied-up (at least, implicitly) here.

In the first part, "Vina Escaped," (which was uploaded in 2012, at 229 pages) she went from vengeful ex-prisoner to someone with a relatively clear plan about what to do next, to complete her "escape" from a troubled past. That's where this story picks up, as she tries to put that plan into action. The _Enterprise _has ended up at Vulcan, after a great deal of trouble, and there seem to be serious questions about what, exactly, is really going on.

This book has not been professionally edited, so I hope you will forgive any rough spots.

RTG

July, 2013

_**Prolog**_

_INTERROGATOR: Why did you stay behind, when the Starship _Enterprise _completed its investigation of Talos IV? Was it out of a greater loyalty to the beings there?_

_VINA: No. I don't know. There was nothing for me. Anywhere. I was ruined. Every dream was a lie. And every dream left me… weaker. When he came back again, at last, Chris was finally like me: ruined too. And when he died… well, that's when I finally learned what nothing really was. _

_INTERROGATOR: You refer to Captain Pike. _

_VINA: (_Inaudible_)_

_INTERROGATOR: And why have you come here now, to Vulcan?_

_VINA: To change the past… if I can. To make it… so I don't exist—so none of this happened. At least, not in this way._

_INTERROGATOR: This is not a valid reason to undertake something as gravely serious as time-travel._

_VINA: Well… I'm not entirely sure that's any of your business._

**Chapter One **

Jim Kirk kept looking for her.

The strange commons area was crowded with long, low white buildings, and farther-spread primordial-looking structures nearer to the desert, like mesas shimmering in the Vulcan heat—despite the cool, silvery fountains all up and down the plaza. Streams of clear water danced in the blazing light, sometimes bent into unexpected, flying loops (by small, hidden anti-grav generators)—glittering streams of water, suddenly dancing and shimmering, and twisting in to new shapes, as if to mock the grave, mirage-like buildings in the distance: the visible evidence of a harsh, primitive past.

Stately men and women with dark hair and pointed ears walked here and there, looking like great, unknown philosophers. A few humans were mixed in (along with a faintly glowing Organian, and a floating sphere that must have contained a Medusan) in their studies, or simply for a peaceful spell in the home of logic.

But Jim Kirk found no sign of Vina now. They'd met in their break-time each day, during the official inquiry… It might have been the heat, and the bright Vulcan sun, both so different to her from her many years of confinement in the dark tunnels of Talos IV—perhaps the relentless sun had finally forced her to burrow under this vastly different desert world, for relief from its pounding heat and light. But surely, he insisted to himself, the Vulcans wouldn't keep her under constant interrogation, after she'd fled her own decades of captivity, and had just begun recovery.

Like the spirit of Hope itself, she'd been one of the last to emerge, once all the keepers had fled Talos before her: unleashed invisibly into Federation space, after Vina and the dying Captain Pike had repaired their ancient machines.

Now, growing impatient, the captain finally stopped looking inside the entry to every building he passed, and pulled a communicator off the belt beneath his gold tunic.

"Kirk to _Enterprise,_" he said quietly, not wanting to disturb the stillness all around.

"Go ahead Captain," Lt. Uhura said, sounding well rested after days of madness, which ultimately pitted four starships against each other, as the keepers ravaged the Federation.

"Any sign of Vina, the human female, down here?"

"Chekov here," the helmsman's voice came down to him, from up in orbit. "Sending her coordinates down to you now, Keptin."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Kirk said, tapping a blinking light on the inside of his communicator, and the little round mesh glowed like an old-fashioned radar screen, in the palm of his hand. He was the dot at the center, and another blinking dot showed up at the "one o'clock" position, almost straight ahead. Well, he consoled himself; at least he hadn't been on the wrong track altogether.

The dot moved around on the mesh screen as he got closer, until he was inside a cooler, modernistic building at the end of the square. A few minutes later he was in an elevator, tilting the communicator up and down, till he got a fix on her once more: once again, buried far below the surface, as if it were her only fate.

When the doors opened up, six floors below the surface, a blank-faced Vulcan stepped forward to greet him, and escorted him down to the fourth vault-like door on the left.

They passed through the heavy, bombproof doorway, into a darkened control room, with its medical monitors and a row of researchers at a wide console. And, beyond that board, through an equally wide and curving window, he could see a great surgical theater below: like the earliest hospitals on Earth, down in the shadows. And down in the middle of all of that, the lone figure of a tiny old woman, the great telepathic warrior, lay motionless on a gurney, bathed in a brilliant round spotlight. Her white sheets glowed like a Petrie dish in the surrounding darkness.

Two silent Vulcan researchers sat behind the curving glass at the controls: seeming neither interested nor disinterested, neither pleased nor displeased. There was absolutely no human chatter up there in the booth, giving the proceedings an eerie, portentous air.

Their patient lay immobile down there, theoretically harmless, theoretically at a safe distance, after years of emotional abuse: when aliens ransacked her brain and heart for colorful dreams to live in, when they'd lost everything else. Theoretically, her own recently-acquired telepathic powers must be as sound asleep as she was, and any Talosian contamination should likewise be held at bay, across the thick glass, behind bomb-proof walls, and far underground.

"Captain Kirk," a voice said behind him. He turned to see another stately humanoid, with his own set of perfectly pointed ears. This new Vulcan bowed with a sort of trained courtliness, as if he were speaking the body language of humans, which he might have learned from some foreign-language training program. Jim Kirk gave a slight head-bow, in return.

"I am Sylann," the Vulcan said, very quietly, as if trying not to wake the lonely old woman on the gurney, far down below them. "Do you require a tour of this facility, or perhaps some reassurance about the Earth female?"

"I just thought I'd see how she was… holding up, after all she's been through," Kirk said, turning back to see his own reflection in the glass, and the harsh blue-white light down below, beyond fifteen or twenty rows of seats that circled down in the amphitheater. Then, remembering the last few pleasant meetings they'd had together, he added, "I thought she might want to… go out for lunch."

The concept seemed utterly ridiculous, though, spoken aloud to these three non-humans. He tried to imagine any of them sitting at a little table at some Parisian sidewalk café, the kind you'd see at a colorful Renoir painting, sun-dappled and gay: full of exuberant couples from nearly 400 years ago… But it didn't quite work, in his own mind, with the Vulcans cast into the roles of French boulevardiers. Where was the singing? Where was the _joie de vivre_?

"Ah, yes, of course," Sylann said, and even managed a trained little smile. His head cocked slightly to one side, as if he were the perfect student, meticulously adding the proper inflection to every common, conversational word or phrase. It was strange to Kirk, to see a full-blooded Vulcan try to pull-off these tiny "human" affectations, after knowing his first officer so long: Spock, who was off visiting his human mother now, somewhere in the white city surrounded by the vast desert: Spock, who (it seemed, anyway) could scarcely be bothered to "fit in" anywhere.

"And," Kirk added, rubbing his left temple in renewed worry, "we've got one of her old captors up on the _Enterprise_. I hate to say we'd like to get rid of it, but…"

"Perfectly understandable," Sylann blinked, but without smiling, and also without cocking his head this time, or giving any sort of gesture that would indicate some kind of sympathy for the plight of the _Enterprise_. Evidently a keeper, like the ones that had suddenly spread all across the galaxy, was too dangerous even for a Vulcan to play around with.

"We've managed—we think—to keep it in a repressed, sedated state," Kirk folded his muscular arms, but still managing to look helpless, in spite of the pose.

"Perhaps," Sylann said, changing the subject from Kirk's unwanted passenger, and turning his attention to their reflections in the windows, "you would like to go down and… 'say hello' to your fellow Earth-person."

Kirk looked appraisingly at the Vulcan, as if something else must be going on. He guessed the team behind the glass might want to see how Vina reacted to his presence, upon waking. Then, as Sylann escorted him back out again, the captain glanced back at the control-room ceiling, and the dark walls behind him, as if to memorize the base-line colors reflected overhead, and the faintest glow of the instrument lights shining all around—as if he might possibly know, when he stood down there by her side, if the booth colors had all shifted along with some red alarm screens when he dared to wake her up. As if everything would change, upon the sight of another human… upon the sight of another starship captain.

Were the Vulcans merely curious about the damage done by decades of telepathic ravaging, and hopeful of learning what dire fate to expect for themselves, if the keepers actually gained control of the Federation? Perhaps Vina had just become something terrible herself, by association. Or were they just killing time, till the evil simply went away?

Sylann turned back to him, politely, a few steps farther down in the stairwell, waiting.

Then, as he followed the Vulcan down to the floor of the amphitheater, Kirk also had the bizarre notion that they might be detaining this renegade escapee, this elderly, hobbled woman, simply to prevent her from doing any more damage out on her own.

"I don't want to be late for my own next stage of de-briefing," he said quietly, though it was as plain-faced a lie as he'd ever told. He had a lot of work left to do up on the _Enterprise_, and only Starfleet knew what he'd be called to do next, as the keepers lay in hiding all across the galaxy—and perhaps beyond. He followed Sylann down between the circular rows of seats.

"I am quite sure this will only take a few minutes," Sylann said, almost seeming to affirm Kirk's notion that they were only using him to test her now.

He blinked, down in the harsh bright pool of surgical lighting, and instantly realized he'd never be able to see back up through the glare, back up into the dark control room, or through the black shadows between, if there really was any dramatic change in their readouts when she awoke.

"What are you testing her for," he said, quietly.

"Contamination," Sylann said, behind him on the edge of the light.

"Of course," Kirk nodded. The term had dogged him for nearly ten days—since the chief of Starfleet Intelligence first sent him back to Talos IV with Mr. Spock, for their second and third visits, respectively.

Kirk's hand brushed the immaculate white sheets by her arm, and she seemed startled, even with her eyes still closed, as if she'd been having another bad dream. As if she hadn't grown used to them, long ago. He knelt down by her side, even as Sylann backed away, as if some invisible violence might erupt.

"I thought I'd come down to see how you were doing," he said, very quietly, as the light shone right down through the outermost layers of her wrinkled skin.

After a moment, she turned over to face him, and the sheets around her seemed to sigh, as she opened her eyes.

"I forgot to put on my face," she whispered, looking up at him. And, just as she'd done before (by reading what was in his mind) she saw herself, and gradually became beautiful again. That horrible purple scar down the length of her face closed up like the last rays of a Rigelian sunset, and a hundred wrinkles smoothed out. Spots went away, and her sun-tanned glow returned, just as her hair turned to gold. Even her lips became like the lustrous pink inside a conch shell, and her eyes, at last, twinkled blue: youth, perfectly restored, on the outside.

Then she saw something else in his eyes: the wariness of the watched. And her own gaze swept down to her feet, toward where she seemed to know the control room was. Her eyes turned higher, and she squinted up into the brilliant glare of the crowded ring of surgical lights.

"We should go out. For a little bite to eat," she said, as if reading his mind again.

Kirk looked around for Sylann, who seemed to have wandered off at some point in the exercise—or, perhaps being tricked into seeing her beauty return was too much for him, and the danger of telepathic contamination had simply become too great.

She wove her hand through the crook in Kirk's arm, and they walked out, slowly but casually. It made him feel strangely wicked, walking out on a scientific inquiry like this, managed by the least offensive people in this part of the galaxy. But, walking around with a beautiful woman on his arm also made him feel a little better about things, and they found their way out of the amphitheater, to a tunnel and an elevator.

And, in any case, as they reached the surface he was fairly certain the Vulcans would be watching closely, whatever happened next.

He put it down to the Vulcan sense of order and simplicity, and their stoic acceptance of the Universe, as it must be. But that made him wary all over again. Because, as they set out for Vulcan a day and a half ago, Vina had planned to enlist their help, to undo what had already happened: climaxing with all those tens of thousands of lost lives in the Rigel system, when the keepers managed to take over three other starships, after he'd regained control of the _Enterprise_. He'd hit upon a way to see through their subterfuges, though it seemed impractical in the long run.

Now, if his reasoning was correct, these devoutly logical Vulcans were simply going to turn their backs on the whole galaxy at risk—and trudge forward as best they could, with or without the rest of the Federation: leaving Vina, and any other non-Vulcans to their chains of fantasy.

They found a set of outdoor tables near the long rows of fountains in the plaza, and he held a chair as she slowly sat down.

"Have you asked them for their help yet?" Kirk sat down himself, watching as she held a hand over her eyes to block the blinding sun.

"I've mentioned it a little, but they keep changing the subject." A little smile played across her lips, as if she was merely engaged some kind of flirtation with the Vulcans, and not the last, desperate attempt of an old woman to save herself—her younger self, from what she'd already become.

"They may not even be able to do it—they may not even have what we call 'an immortal soul,'" Kirk said, though he had to glance around to make sure he wasn't offending anyone who might be passing by. (It was still fourteen years before he'd learn of the Vulcan "_katra_.")

"Oh, they can do it," Vina sighed; waving the idea away with that same hand that had been blocking the glare.

"But they don't want to," Kirk concluded, for her.

"These first people I've mentioned it to," she sighed again, "they're just minor functionaries—strangers. There are still others down here I can go to for help."

He read the auto-menu on the table between them, and finally tapped the check box for a drink.

If nothing else, under the Vulcan sun, Vina did not seem cold any longer, the way she had, since he'd met her. She relaxed in the metal chair across from him, and her white jump suit seemed more appropriate: giving her the look of the scientist she'd been before Talos. Before she grew old, before her time. Still, he almost preferred her when they first they met face to face, in that huge fur coat that kept her warm: covering an odd series of black strings and triangles she wore underneath, and brazenly wearing the illusion of youth.

"You won't be here much longer," she said, appraising his practiced air of boyishness, as he looked into her clear blue eyes. It was a peculiar contest of appearances, in which his show of innocence was almost as perfect as her illusion of beauty.

"I really don't know," Kirk admitted. Certainly, a Starfleet de-briefing shouldn't take any more than a few days, under normal circumstances. But four starships had swept down to destroy three worlds in the Rigel system, and then there was whatever mayhem Vina could be linked to before that, in her own one-woman war. And, all of that, taken at face value, seemed like enough to land them both in some obscure penal colony for the rest of their lives. So these were far from normal circumstances. The cagey old red-head, Captain Safeer, must be going through the same questioning somewhere around here, while all four of their battle-scarred ships were being repaired in orbit.

"Assuming the Vulcans even believe our stories," she sighed, looking far off toward the desert cliffs beyond the city, wavering like the future, on the horizon.

"Assuming they can, or even wish, to do anything about it," Kirk added, looking down at his hands. They had become clenched together like fists of prayer.

"Why wouldn't they?" Vina said, seeming deeply puzzled, as she turned that faraway look on him.

"Maybe," Kirk shrugged, and managed a fretful little smile, "the Vulcans will decide we're just… reverting to type." A drinks trolley came humming out of the nearest building, with Kirk's glass on it, and stopped by his side. At least there was still a pretense of hospitality, regardless of how this planet really felt about humans and their vulnerability to the escaped keepers. But how low, how weak, were humans in the sight of the Vulcan high council? Could they be too low for redemption?

"You think they're supposing," she smiled, in spite of herself, "that humans, like me, shouldn't really expect to rise above our dreamy, romantic folly?"

"Something like that," Kirk said, remembering to smile one more time. It was a fairly bleak assessment, but not entirely outside of the realm of possibility.

"And just step aside while the whole galaxy plunges itself into a great Dark Ages? Because of an attack made possible by a Vulcan, himself?" She smiled at the strange, sad twist of fate. "When Mr. Spock brought Chris back to me, and we unleashed them all, as the price of our freedom?"

"A half-Vulcan," Kirk said, sipping the drink. The bitterness of the phrase that came out of his mouth soured the liquid noticeably.

But she had him there: Spock's returning Captain Christopher Pike to Talos IV, to be with her, made the whole disaster inevitable. And hideous madness had swept along in its wake, first in the Wrigley system, then around Saldana, and Rigel, and maybe farther by now. He wondered if the Vulcans suddenly regretted Spock, himself, for blending the two races together, and leading them all (however incidentally) into these dangerous new times.

"Ah, Captain Kirk," a now-familiar voice said, coming up behind him. He turned to see Sylann, approaching in the near-blinding light of day.

"Ready for me?"

"Yes, Captain," the Vulcan nodded, as Kirk rose from the little café table. Once again, Vina was being left on her own.

"Will you be all right?"

"I'm sure they won't forget about me," she smiled, not regarding the native Vulcan by Kirk's side. But then, she gave a little smile that seemed to say, "as much as they might _like _to forget about me." Then, as Kirk turned to leave with Sylann, he thought he heard her say something else.

_I've got to be moving on_.

"What's that?" he asked, turning back. Sylann stopped, politely, a pace or two away. Sensing something in her expression, the captain of the _Enterprise_ came back to the little café table, and crouched by her side.

_They don't want anything to do with me—with either of us, really,_ she added, her eyes narrowing slightly, as she gazed upon the very polite Vulcan nearby.

_Why do you say that,_ he thought, assuming she'd be able to read his thoughts.

_Add it up, _she said, directly into his mind: with a faraway look that suggested she was halfway off the planet already. _If you were under the control of the keepers, wouldn't Vulcan be one of the very first places you'd come, to crush their enemies for them? With me, a contaminated former prisoner, and even with a keeper, himself, up on board your powerful starship? They'd have to assume—_logically_—it's all just some clever trap, arranged by the keepers, to eradicate the telepathic Vulcans… or at least to get them out of the picture._

He didn't like the way it 'added up' at all and, based on his own experience, he couldn't believe the Vulcans were so fearful, or mistrustful. Meanwhile, Sylann waited a few meters away: seeming to patiently count every molecule of the unforgiving, thin air between his nose and some distant desert mesa.

"Contamination," Kirk sighed, as though the word had never really been very far from his lips all along. It dogged anyone who'd ever been to Talos IV. He remained there, like a trained animal by her side—though his mind had suddenly jumped halfway across the galaxy and back to Talos.

He remembered arriving there again, less than ten days ago, to find the planet nearly abandoned—just a few forgotten captives in the dank underground—slowly dying in the tunnels below the surface. And how angry, how hemmed-in, were their starving souls, after years of being milked dry of every last hope and dream.

_Such a waste_, she seemed to agree, though her lips never moved.

"Come on," he said, extending a hand toward her, and she slowly rose from the café chair. She had only just begun her joint regeneration therapy up on the _Enterprise_, and it would still be another few weeks before she was fully mobile again, in spite of her years.

"Did you ask anyone else about your plan?" he said, aloud, as Sylann walked just ahead, robes swaying.

She didn't even bother to "think" her words at him, only shaking her head in silence. It seemed too depressing to contemplate.

"You should," he insisted. "Tell… their higher-ups what's on your mind… or you'll never stand a chance of getting it." But, even to an eternal optimist like Kirk, his words sounded faintly idiotic.

"They don't want anything to do with me," she said, her voice sounding frail, even as she made herself to appear young and beautiful in the sunlight.

"Surely, the Vulcans you trained with, as a student," he said, disdaining her decades of learned fatalism: "they must be willing at least to see you again…" But he knew he was engaged in the hardest salesmanship of all now, convincing someone to do what was right for them, in spite of a lifetime of failed dreams.

"Doctor T'Mara was quite old when he advised me at Starfleet Academy," Vina said, looking down at the blinding white pavers at her feet as they walked slowly, "and Doctor T'Lan must be dead too, of course."

"Oh, but you are quite mistaken about that, Dr. Vina," Sylann said, stopping suddenly, ahead of them, and bowing his head as if asking forgiveness for eavesdropping. Both Kirk and Vina stared at the gracious man with the pointed ears, partly because it soothed the human eye: his dark robes relieving their retinae of the burning light all around.

"In what way," Kirk asked, as Vina watched, appraising their Vulcan escort.

"But Doctor T'Lan is quite alive," Sylann almost smiled. "For you see, I am her fifth-degree grand-cousin, on my mother's side."

"Oh," Kirk leapt at the opportunity, and the sudden warmth of their host. "Then you must take us to her right away! If it is permitted, of course."

"It is most permitted," the Vulcan nodded, even smiling. But the change of plans also seemed to confirm Vina's theory that they were all just killing time, while the high council tried to come to grips with the problem of these dream-addicted humans.

Sylann hitched his thumb down behind his belt, within his robes, like a cattle rancher at a saloon, just waiting for a drink. But it was only to signal an air-car, which descended quietly before them, out of the sky.

An hour passed, and many sand dunes raced below, as they traveled east. Many more dunes still stretched out before them. But it was all much more hopeful, somehow, instead of just being held for pointless questioning and study, day after day. In the meantime Kirk tried to explain Vina's plan, to go back and avoid the spread of the keepers across Federation space in the first place. Sylann kept his gaze out along the horizon during the flight, while Vina seemed withdrawn, in the back seat.

"Does that sound feasible to you?" Kirk asked, as they flew above the sands.

"Many beings perceive themselves as a constant, in the equation of their own lives," Sylann said, without seeming to endorse or condemn the idea. "But my grand-cousin is quite aged. And her patience… with more emotional beings, and perhaps with the strange contortions of the mind that you describe… may be rather limited."

"Well," Kirk sighed, seeming undeterred, "it… can't hurt to ask."

Sylann shifted in his seat, turning to the starship captain with a very particular kind of focus, a very direct look in his dark eyes, as the air-car raced above the sands.

"We have been very struck by the attacks on Rigel, and those that occurred before," he said, quietly, as if (even in the privacy of the air-car) the high council might be examining his every word. "If a race like the keepers of Talos IV can infiltrate even your own complex mind, with its many twists and turns, Captain Kirk, what hope is there for anyone less than a starship commander?"

"I don't know," Kirk admitted. "But we have to keep trying."

And, finally, the air-car descended again. They were on the outskirts of a much smaller city, whipped by wind and sand, far across the desert.

It was strangely epic—the sight of the beautiful Vina in her white jumpsuit, slowly crossing to a walled courtyard surrounding a private, stucco-covered home, to meet T'Lan, all draped in black. The elderly professor likewise inched closer from the other end of the quiet garden, from within high walls to keep out the sand. To Kirk, it seemed as if both women were crossing through the stubborn, invisible meshes of the years, or breaking through invisible cobwebs, as they reached toward one another.

Eventually they did met to clasp hands at the thick outer wall, and T'Lan led her visitors into the center of the courtyard, amidst the tall, dark plants she sheltered within. A strictly geometric stream flowed around the plants, rippling water set into the black-tiled floor, a floor that shone like slate, or waves frozen upon a dark sea. Kirk kept his distance, preferring a modest shady corner near the gate. He imagined it wouldn't do to for a pair of relatively young humans to go ganging-up on an old Vulcan, like a couple of eager Labradors.

There appeared to be a tiny Vulcan hummingbird, or perhaps a large insect, going from one desert flower to another, on invisibly fast little wings, as the sun set and shadows in the courtyard began to spread. It flew over and lit on T'Lan's iron-colored hair, fluttering before it came to rest like a glittering piece of jewelry.

For a long moment, the old Vulcan peered into the Earthwoman's eyes, like a very analytical mother, searching for signs of trouble or damage, before lifting her gaze to regard the starship captain.

"You are welcome, James T. Kirk," the ancient professor nodded—but he wondered if she was even seeing him. Or if, perhaps, she was "feeling" his presence with her mind, somewhere in the direction of the cool corner where he stood.

Then Sylann brought Kirk forward, toward the inner rooms of the house, into the quiet of a greeting hall. The black polished stones of the terrace continued inside, where the walls that stretched up were of the starkest white to a high, wood-beamed ceiling. The tiniest vertical textures of the stucco walls, and the stilled waves of the slate-like floor, seemed like many delicate, captured vibrations in the air, rather than the natural imperfections of thin plaster or stone: like fragmented winds, stilled after the final clash of some youthful, contradictory thoughts, long ago.

The two women sat down on a small bench in the entry hall. And Jim Kirk would have exhaled with relief, but he realized they were not being allowed any farther inside—which made him begin to doubt the intimacy he'd hoped for, between Vina and T'Lan: and now he momentarily despaired of any crucial alliance or friendship from long ago, that might help them going forward.

He also noticed there was something hunched about both women, sitting there on the bench: as if each carried some terrible private burden, some invisible workman's load, as they huddled together like a pair of ancient tortoises. Except that one projected a lovely youthful image, as gaudy as a counterfeit diamond necklace.

T'Lan could have been 175 for sure, or roughly twice as old as Vina, Kirk supposed. He studied her face, which was as steady and wrinkled as Sitting Bull's: catching the first glimpse of eternity beyond these fading dimensions. But the garden insect that landed on her straight gray hair was still there, as if lulled into sleep by her absolute self-possession, and her purely logical thoughts.

Finally, Vina touched the old Vulcan's hand with her own (seemingly) plump, spotlessly bronzed hand, and in leaned closer.

"I don't know if you would consider this to be 'safe,'" she began, casting her eyes down at the spindly old boots T'Lan wore below her dark, serious robes. "But I wanted to put a stop to something… something that's already happened…"

And, in an instant, T'Lan had thrown off Vina's hand and was standing with unexpected, imperious strength and energy. Startled by her rising, the humming-bug flew off her head and out into the sunset, as if alarmed by the approach of some unseen predator. T'Lan followed, hobbling back out to the walled garden.

"Do not come to me like this," she hissed, as Vina looked ashamed and covered her knees with her hands where she sat. "Such vanity. Such grandeur," T'Lan sighed angrily, or as close to anger as she could bring herself, after a lifetime of training in the study of self-restraint. God help them all, Kirk thought, if she ever allowed herself to be any more hot-blooded. Then, with an unaccountable disdain, the old Vulcan said through gritted teeth,

"It is the bell that rings itself!"

And before her strange words could fully die in the air, T'Lan had reached the doorway. Then, fully on the other side of the threshold, in the dusky half-light, the older scientist turned back to the beautiful blond one, as if to dismiss her.

"Please," Vina said, rising more slowly than T'Lan, and taking just a step forward from the bench.

"The past cannot be changed," T'Lan said flatly, as if issuing a great commandment—almost growling. "It is the legs we stand on, here in the present." And, to Kirk, it seemed that T'Lan was standing very firmly indeed, to show Vina the way out. A few embarrassing seconds passed, and something tired and bitter in her black, cold eyes seemed to suggest the past and present were now only points on a dry parchment map she'd soon be glad to roll up and leave behind.

"Telepathy can be used for evil or for good," Vina insisted, looking stricken as she took another few steps across the large front hall, out toward her mentor, out in the garden. "Your long life can be used to help the good stand up, or you can neglect the present danger, and weaken us all till the galaxy collapses into evil."

"Beauty can be used," T'Lan said, studying her severely, from nearly ten meters away. "The past can be used. Everything can be 'used' …even logic." But it was that last observation that seemed to change her mood from haughty defiance, to one of deep consternation. The two women looked past one another, strangely.

"I've got to stop the evil I helped release upon the galaxy," Vina said at last, growing harsh and insistent. She leaned forward, her forehead thrusting at T'Lan like some bony Klingon brow, as if in warning: with her own vast experience on the subject of evil, toward this tidy old rationalist.

A long silence ensued, as Vina made her way out to the garden doorway, clearly intending to walk right past her old professor in defeat. The earth woman now seethed with anger; and the Vulcan was equally fearsome with a kind of regal shock. Kirk remained off to one side, trying to come up with some argument to help Vina, and the Federation. But it was the elderly Vulcan woman who finally spoke.

"The past is used up," T'Lan said, almost too quiet to hear, leaning right in to Vina as she passed out of the entry hall. The blond only made it a few steps out into the dusk, halted by her former professor's question:

"What part of yourself would you be willing to give up, to change it?"

There was a bitter pause, in which Vina finally turned, alone in the garden now, and met T'Lan's stern gaze.

"My pain, my imprisonment," Vina said. "Everything, if necessary." From the look in her unflinching eyes, it was clear she could never reclaim all that had been stolen. And then, resignedly, Vina walked out into the desert again, as T'Lan slowly pursued. It was like a very slow-motion chase scene, and finally T'Lan called after her.

"You think you can escape from these things? From pain? From so-called 'imprisonment'?" At the Vulcan's words, Vina paused, on the path back to the air-car. And in a moment, the two women were silhouetted against the sunset, the desert wind yanking at their hair and their clothing.

But suddenly it was a different Vina: the aged, crash-scarred scientist, who had emerged: as if her beauty was eroded by the sand. It was hard for Kirk to see, with her face shadowed that way against the twilight. But the bad repair to her shoulder, and her frail, off-balance stance soon became obvious.

T'Lan simply waited, as if there were another, subtler transformation to come. But, in spite of her more vulnerable appearance, Vina seemed even more confident now that she'd dropped the mask of beauty. A sarcastic little smile played on her lips.

"What does it matter, if we change the present?" Vina said, nodding with a degree of irony, as if she understood T'Lan's disinterest; or perhaps her head had simply become too heavy for her neck to support any longer.

And, as the wind quieted down at last, Kirk could plainly hear the struggle in Vina's voice. The workings of her jaws and lungs deep inside had also seemingly decayed, and she spoke through clenched teeth. At first, it almost sounded like she was trying to find agreement with T'Lan, who looked perfectly content to surrender the rest of the galaxy to mad self-indulgence. Then, Vina added, even more ironically:

"What does it matter… if we change the future?" And, in the twilight, the captain could only assume her eyes were directed at the far more ancient Vulcan as she spoke. "The past is the only tool you and I have left, beyond our reason. It's the rock that breaks the future open."

Now, far from static or slow, watching the two old women swaying and breathing and staring at one another was almost as stressful as a fistfight between two young men. Kirk could hear, from Vina's rapid, shallow breathing and see, from T'Lan's stark, glaring eyes, that each woman's exertion was reaching its limit. Now and then, each reeled backward or forward, as if struggling for balance.

"You wish to abolish yourself… in the present… to make a sacrifice for yourself, in the past?" Somehow, everything these elderly Vulcans said sounded incredulous.

"It does seem rather backward, I admit," Vina said.

"You hope to send a message into the past: to a crossroads of decision, walking across my soul, as your own cobblestones," T'Lan nodded, suspiciously.

"What other choice do I have?" Vina shrugged, and Kirk's eyes had adapted to looking out into the evening to see a broken-hearted smile spread like a horizontal scar, across the grisly purple crash-mark that ran right down the middle of her face. But the smile seemed to unbalance her again, and her head wobbled over her white jumpsuit, now tinged with reddish sand, and pastel shadows of sunset.

"To accept things as they are is only logic," T'Lan said, and Vina bowed in defeat.

"Ma'am," Kirk spoke up, at last, "we've just spent ten days witnessing all sorts of violence, of innocent lives taken, and innocent people turned into murderers, because of… something that began with a few hopeful gestures of love: a love that reunited Vina with my predecessor, after a terrible accident; and his love, that finally set her free—along with her former captors. Now, we only want to set things back the way they were, before many more lives are ruined or destroyed."

"So much has been thrown into chaos. And perhaps you see yourselves as masters of this chaos?" It was a shocking accusation, but T'Lan only raised her eyebrows in an air of general inquiry. Then she glanced at Sylann, who had been standing by Kirk's side. Quickly, silently, the young grand-cousin escorted her back in to the garden, back within the safety of her own walls, to a bench beneath an arching tree.

Then, in a way so humble it left Jim Kirk feeling faintly horrified, Vina slowly followed back into the garden, revealing all of the neglect and violence against her, to sit down at her teacher's black boots, upon the black stone floor: the Earth woman in white huddled at the feet of the Vulcan in black.

"We squander our whole lives to bring you forward into rationalism," T'Lan lamented, almost smiling, "and you come to us only for sentimental reasons, still."

"If I am successful," Vina explained again, looking across T'Lan's robed knees, to the far shadows of the garden, "I shall have created a condition of complete self-denial—denying myself the love of my life, as well as my present suffering too."

"And in this way, you propose to save your fellow humans," T'Lan said, looking down at her severely, as if it must be a terribly foolish investment.

"If I can go back… and prevent the keepers from escaping their dead world, from gaining a foothold in my own people's minds, I will have gained far more than I could ever offer of myself. I thought I could go back, directly through one of my captors on the _Enterprise_. But it didn't seem to change anything, counseling them in their own distant past, through the mind-tunnel of their own greater powers."

"And you wish me to help you in this… _suicide_ of yours… on behalf of so many hundreds of billions of ridiculous creatures? Beings who cannot control their perceptions—or even their dreams? To help one of my own students destroy all that I have worked to create within her? No. We must leave them to their dreams."

There was an awkward silence, and Vina tilted her battered head, remembering.

"It is because of what you have created within me, that I come to you now," Vina murmured. "I have seen the children, falling out of the sky," she said, of the madness over Wrigley II, "and the hated and despised: their bodies consumed in flame," she added quietly, speaking of Talos IV, 750,000 years ago, before the great war that destroyed that planet. The strange vision, of Talos' first, loathed telepaths, shrouded in flames had come to her, before they'd left for Vulcan, two days ago.

"Men and women, just shoving each other into purification vats, creating such wretchedness in their hearts, that they will never feel clean again," she added, remembering where she first met Kirk, on Saldana II, some eight days ago. Remembering another case of contamination in this strange new war.

T'Lan remained silent, which could have meant anything, Kirk supposed. Then, finally, she spoke.

"You must learn to accept these things as they are." There was only the slightest of pauses, before she changed gears again, becoming more serene. "Have you any other business to conduct with me?"

Kirk could only look away in private anguish, as Vina struggled to rise from the black slate floor, looking like she might just as easily collapse. T'Lan did not help her, and Sylann seemed responsive only to his living ancestor. If the old Vulcan felt any pity, she did not show it. It was a maddening display.

Finally, Vina walked across to the garden doorway again and Kirk followed, with a pained little nod to their host. In a moment, Sylann was coming up behind them too. The three returned to the air car without speaking.

"What will you do, now," Kirk asked quietly, sitting next to Vina in the back seat.

"What I have been doing," she said, not bothering to put on her youthful illusion anymore. It almost seemed that Vina had heeded T'Lan's stern advice, to accept her true self, and the terrible cost of her freedom. Then the dunes fell below, to a brown vista, and sped by: dimly lit by a trailing red asteroid above, which some called a moon. Now it dogged this cold, hot world like a beggar's soul.

"I suppose it doesn't really matter, when your days are numbered down so low," she sighed. Finally, she drew a peach-and-gold colored cigarette from her pocket, and a little matchstick shaped lighter. She expelled the first great breath of smoke like a simmering anger. Words quickly followed.

"I just hoped to stop them, before they turned the whole human race into… what I've become." Another ghostly cloud filled the backseat, as she exhaled again.

"Well," he said at last, as the endless desert sailed beneath them, and the glow of twilight reappeared in the west, up ahead, "every great journey begins with 'no.'"

Finally they rose to their full cruising altitude, ten kilometers up. And only then, the sun seemed to rise again, but this time out of the west: like one last chance at seizing the day.

**Chapter Two**

After all of that, it wasn't too hard for Captain Kirk to convince her to spend the night up on board the great starship. In fact, once the lights were down, Vina seemed to fall right to sleep in sickbay, as her joint-renewal therapy hummed over her hips and knees: round transducers, like old-style heat lamps, focusing on each of the largest weight-bearing joints; while nano-bots (injected a few days ago) did their corresponding work deep within her bones, activated by the transducers.

"I don't know, Jim," Dr. McCoy said, folding his arms, as they stood outside the wardroom, in his office. "A couple of weeks like that, at least."

"She seems so willing, all of a sudden, to just… give up and… die," Kirk shook his head, in spite of all their best efforts to keep her going, and renew her worn-out body.

"It's all she's been through: medical neglect; decades of poor nutrition; no exercise; and finally," McCoy squinted, shaking his head, "the loss of the great love of her life. And now this new disappointment, with her old professor down on Vulcan."

Something else seemed to turn McCoy's expression darker, still—and Kirk could only assume the doctor was estimating the added toll of an endless stream of dreams, cruelly turned against her, in which Vina was merely a puppet.

"And what about…" Kirk could only finish his question by nodding through the doorway, toward the keeper in the wardroom: two beds away from Vina, with its huge skull locked between a pair of brain-wave dampeners. It had been there for over three days now, accessible only through the strange massed telepathy of the elderly blond Earth scientist and Kirk's own science officer.

"So far, it seems fine," McCoy shrugged, his voice now scarcely audible at all, as if the formidable telepath might overhear. And, if it hadn't been for that bracket of energy-dampeners, putting the creature in a deep sleep-state, it probably could have sifted through every mind in the ship, and controlled at least a handful of the most important in very short order.

"But it would be nice to off-load… or, transfer it—him—off to some other authority," Kirk concluded, looking at the frail, tiny alien, in its silvery robe, lying there motionless. Both men seemed to feel safest on the other side of the doorframe.

"Well, sure," McCoy agreed. "But then she'll just need another one, or its blood, to maintain her borrowed telepathic powers. And, of course, her illusion of beauty—which, let's face it, probably helps her on some level of psychological healing."

"You could just take another vial, for safe-keeping," Kirk said, trying to sound as mild and inoffensive as he could. But the doctor had already expressed himself, before this visit to Vulcan, on the general subject of draining another sentient being, even a hostile one, as if it were a fountain of youth. There was a moment of silence.

"How long do you think we can just keep it like that," the doctor wondered. The screen over the keeper's head was still mostly blank, as it had been, since they'd regained control of the _Enterprise_.

"You mean," Kirk answered, as quietly as the chief medical officer, "how long do you think it'll stay alive? Or, how long do you think we can keep it… under control?"

McCoy only nodded to show that, at least, the questions were right. The answers were anybody's guess.

Two hours later, the lights were very dim in the sickbay wardroom, and Vina had grown restless watching her own heartbeat and pulse upside down in the red blinking lights above her pillow: on and off in the dark, as if that's all there was to life anymore. Not even a psychological experiment any more, as she'd been on Talos—now just a physical one; and only a bed away from one of her former enslavers.

And no matter how much she tried to put it out of her head, she couldn't give up her idea of sending a message back across the years, through some willing telepath, to his or her younger self: the dream of stopping her own self, before she made a terrible mistake. She'd just need another Vulcan, or perhaps another telepath of any description, who might have lived long enough to know her both then and now, and who could burrow back through their own soul, to just before her fateful voyage, 55 years ago…

The glowing hip and knee regenerators hummed quietly against her joints, like robotic painters' arms, brushing this way and that, as the bones beneath the skin knit stronger, microscopic layer-by-layer. But somehow the sheer boredom and helplessness of being bedridden finally compelled her to prop herself up on her elbows, and slip off the bed. When you're stuck in a hospital bed, she knew, all you ever really wanted was to get up and go for a walk. Anywhere.

She stopped a few meters away, at the foot of the keeper's bed: anxiously folding and unfolding her arms but, somehow, she couldn't possibly achieve a straightforward look of scientific detachment. The moment she'd composed herself in an attitude of harmless pondering (lest any night nurse should suddenly pop in) she began to feel awkward and artificial, as if she were forced to admit she was watching her former jailer with a very strange motive—and so she dropped her arms to her sides, only to raise them to the step-plate at the foot of its bed, till even that simple pose seemed entirely too contrived as well. Then she began all over again, folding her arms, exasperated at her own timidity.

"_We had meant you no harm_," its voice seemed to say, as she stood there watching the motionless little figure. Or was she imagining it? The voice, speaking plainly from inside her own head, 1/3rd the size, should have sounded perfectly clear. But there was some metallic strain in it, as if telepathy itself had finally become too challenging, in the grip of those brainwave dampeners, and the smallest escaping thoughts were somehow distressed and distorted.

Of course, her own mind was instantly filled with bitter memories of beautiful dreams, squeezed out of her like the toothpaste her grandmother used to use: dreams to keep the keepers alive themselves: that left her waking up after each golden moment, lying on a cold stone floor, dazed and embarrassed, and usually alone. Like waking up in some lonely Hell, after too good a time, over and over again. But then, as she stood there in the wardroom, her thoughts were interrupted.

"_You are correct: your dreams kept us all alive. In fact, yours were so vibrant we eventually grafted them on to the weaker minds of many others who crashed on our world. It kept them alive far longer than we ever expected, given the extent of their injuries, and for far longer than those who crashed long before your arrival. You feel damaged… but you saved many lives, giving them hope and dreams they'd never had before."_

Vina stood in silence for a moment, not hearing the distant beeping of computers and monitors in the sickbay at all. For now, she had to wonder: which was worse, dying quickly from your own crash-wounds, or being kept just barely alive with someone else's transplanted memories, so that in your own dying you were merely danced around like a marionette… on borrowed strings? She suddenly felt wretched, and complicit in the guilt of the keepers.

Finally a nurse did walk by, in the doctor's office, and Vina made herself invisible in the near-darkness. A vial of Talosian blood four or five days ago had made that possible again.

But instead of feeling grateful, she just wanted to beat her former captor to death, or perhaps slowly, ruthlessly squeeze it dry, as they had been doing to her, till the alien was as finally as dead as Chris. She oscillated back and forth from one violent emotion to the other, every ten or twenty seconds. And then she had to admit, from a purely scientific standpoint (which had eluded her till now), there must still be some use for a creature like this, besides the vain drawing of blood, for her power and beauty. Even after all its other victims had died, or been sorted out to their own home worlds, she was convinced she still had some business to conclude with it—this twig-like collection of bones, and that giant, Brussels sprout of a head. With dark cranial arteries pulsing quietly there on an orange-colored, metallic mesh pillow.

But soon that head, that giant Brussels sprout, seemed to vibrate like a great bulging flower blossom to her, full of poisonous potential, once the nurse had passed by—no longer a just a weirdly comical vegetable sprout: more like something about to open up and spread its pollen on whatever unwary creatures passed by. She regained her impulse was to smash it to bits, as Chris Pike had threatened to do, before his youthful escape. Before she'd followed her own strange impulse to stay behind.

And yet, this was also her whole family now, with Chris dead. Not even a boastful, foolish Telerite or dark and desperate cephalopod to stand with her against their shared misfortune, for those former prisoners had each found their own true homes once more.

There was also T'Lan, like a stern mother in some ways. But the ancient Vulcan seemed to have divorced her, or at least divorced herself from Vina's plan to rescue them all. There had also been old Professor T'Mara, old even when he taught Vina about space flight, and navigating the invisible dimensions of warp space, and all that went along with the earliest interstellar travel. Surely he was long dead by now…

But that's what she'd said about T'Lan. Maybe…

She walked back to her bed and pulled a viewscreen out from the wall, on a long segmented arm. She tapped in her search-terms on the screen, and… sure enough, T'Mara had been dead for nearly 40 years. Dead and gone.

Then, her eyes turned back in grim resignation to the keeper. She watched as the alien body on the pallet seemed to barely shake apart, silently, into a hundred vibrations of itself, just off-center from the actual keeper she saw before her: just for a moment, when that shuddering vibration took place, and then it was still once more. As if the whole of the tiny body in its robes was refracted into many other selves, and she could see all of them, almost blurred together, all of them from many other parallel universes, many other present moments, just a hairsbreadth apart from its exact placement there on the bed. Then, utterly still…

_Or perhaps_, she thought, _as if it was already being erased from its own past?_

But it still reminded her of a blooming bud: about to open into some ghastly, garish display above its brow at any moment. And how all the keepers had been joined together, mentally, for the last 750,000 years, after their war for freedom had finally destroyed their non-telepathic brethren. Her left hand reached out, toward the sleeping form, as if to strangle some invisible spirit that threatened to spread itself like contagion. But when she closed her fingers, her fist was empty.

She turned and walked out of the wardroom, stern with resolve. It barely occurred to her that she was walking more and more smoothly, thanks to the regenerative treatments. And then, Captain Kirk's hopeful words came back to her, once again:

_Every great journey_ _begins with "no." _

But the whole track of her existence seemed utterly wrong to her: one great "no," in fact, for most of her life. And with that realization, she turned on her heel and walked out of sickbay, into the wide curving corridor of Deck Five. It was nearly empty at this "late" hour of the night.

She went around, to no apparent destination, and chanced to meet Mr. Spock, who paused in the middle of the corridor to greet her.

"Haven't seen you in a while," she smiled. There were only a few other crewmen passing up and down, disappearing around the bends, beyond either scientist's shoulder.

"I have been on the surface, visiting family," Spock answered, without any trace of the usual human emotions, pleasure, sadness, or at least exhaustion.

"Yes, well," she said, finding herself a little breathless, all of a sudden, "I've had a little family reunion of my own. To visit an old professor. A waste of time, I'm afraid."

"Ah," the first officer of the _Enterprise _nodded. "Your plan to re-connect with your younger self through a telepathic conduit, back through time."

"Yes."

"And this professor was your only living link?" He said it so matter-of-factly.

But suddenly she appraised Mr. Spock in an entirely new way, not as the man who brought her beloved Chris back to her on Talos; nor the man who possessed vast new library of untapped memories of Captain Pike in his own memory; but as a new connection with her own, long-buried past, before all of that. Finally, he had become her salvation, in a way she'd never imagined. There was a funny little pause.

"Perhaps not my _only _living link," she smiled.

It became an unexpectedly eventful night for them both.

Old Doctor T'Mara was in the middle of a lecture at Starfleet Academy, to what looked like an audience of about 200 young cadets, most of who seemed vaguely exasperated, or hopelessly confused. And, behind them all, behind the top-most row in the stadium-like auditorium, stood a little Vulcan boy with dark straight hair and elegantly pointed ears, but also chubby little Earth-boy cheeks—which his Earth-born relatives could hardly keep from pinching, for the last three days, on a rare visit to his human mother's world.

He stood alone, up at the top of the lecture hall. And far down below, Dr. T'Mara spoke plainly and without many gestures, as a huge hologram floated behind him, illustrating dodeca-dimensional physics on something like a giant, glowing soccer ball. The five-year old Spock listened politely, up above, trying to absorb as much of the lecture as he could, which was perhaps more than half. The other half, he stored up in his memory for later study.

His mother Amanda waited out in the hall, no longer surprised by anything her half-Vulcan son did anymore, though of course she insisted on coming with him, if only to gain him admittance. The serious little boy seemed quite convinced he would need an hour or less to conduct his business with this theoretical physicist and, from his mother's own past experience, there seemed little doubt he'd be as good as his word.

Finally the lecture came to an end, and the boy-Spock thought he could detect some minor impatience on the face of the full-blooded Vulcan professor down in the center of the hall, as the students filed-up the stairs, and out past this terribly serious child. Spock wore a Terran pair of overalls and cowboy boots, which his grandparents had enthusiastically pressed upon him at his arrival. Was it the business of every Earth family member to make each other look and feel as ridiculous as possible? Or was this merely his lot in life? He much preferred his sober Vulcan robes, though otherwise Earth seemed pleasant enough.

The lecture hall was nearly empty now, and, as if he'd done it a hundred times before, the little boy quickly made his way down the long steps to the dais, where Dr. T'Mara was putting a few memory plaques into a satchel that hung from his shoulder. Gone was the floating hologram, as glowing and hollow as the heads of the youthful academy students who'd fled as quickly as possible.

At the sight of a fellow Vulcan, and one so very young, the professor stopped completely, and gave a slight bow of respect. The five-year old did likewise.

"Please, gracious master," Spock began, "have you a student from Earth by the name of Vina Orwell?"

The professor squinted slightly, down at the little Vulcan cowboy.

"Not at this time," T'Mara said, glancing down, and then quickly turning to go.

"But," Spock insisted, "perhaps at _any _time?"

At this strange turn of phrase, T'Mara paused and faced the boy again, the old man's robes swirling as slightly as the change in the direction of their talk. In an instant, it seemed the stern professor had ascertained something unusual about this little visitor.

"You are not fully Vulcan," he said quietly. "Are you related to this person you seek?"

"It is not I who must seek her, learned one." And at this age, Spock was still entirely innocent, as he attempted to engage a potential ally. An older boy would have probably been more overtly humble, and less plainly outspoken. But artfulness might have looked suspicious to T'Mara, a philosopher of too many dimensions. And, as they stood facing each other on the lecture platform, the boy (who barely measured 65 centimeters in height) rubbed his nose unselfconsciously.

"I cannot help you, little one," T'Mara said, and strode off the platform toward a side door, leading to a tunnel beneath the seats. But the five-year-old was alert enough to know that he had touched off a strange alarm in the old man's head.

Spock hurried after him, recalling the strange echoing presence in his own mind—like his own thoughts, but not—in his own voice, but not—telling him to seek out this man, and (if possible) a young woman planning a very long voyage. And to stop her, at any cost: _Find professor T'Mara at Starfleet… Stop his pupil Vina Orwell… from a journey that threatens the future of the galaxy. _There were images, too.

He pulled the heavy tunnel door open, to catch sight of the Vulcan professor just disappearing into the network of hallways up ahead. And, of course, the boy scampered after him. His little boots made a loud clicking noise as he hurried along, and he paused only briefly to determine which way T'Mara might have gone, at this turn or that in the passageways. He jammed his pudgy little hands over his mouth, to dampen the sound of his own panting breath, and to listen with the greatest possible sensitivity, while his large dark eyes darted back and forth in the shadows.

He set out running again, as a little boy of that size and age could scarcely travel any other way but at full-speed, and finally came to a closed door. When he opened it, he looked down a busy hallway, and thought he saw the colorful reflection of Professor T'Mara's jeweled robes swaying against an office door. Once again, the five year old hurried after. Dozens of Starfleet cadets and their instructors barely noticed the little one, dashing around knots of people who were conversing or making their way to some chamber or hall or laboratory, in groups of two's and three's.

"She is a golden woman—a gold-headed woman," the little Spock blurted out, as soon as he grabbed the doorway where T'Mara had sought his escape, and now stood listening to another professor talk about some conference she'd just returned from. Both learned masters paused to glance down quizzically at the boy, before turning away again, ignoring him completely.

When T'Mara's colleague finally stopped, and seemed quite unsure about the little Vulcan boy who would not leave them alone, the small Spock heaved a great sigh, to catch his breath at last.

"Please excuse my unforgivable behavior, learned master," the little boy insisted, as the other professor quietly walked out into the corridor and disappearing, just as T'Mara himself would have liked to do, too. But, instead, the professor simply folded his hands in front of his robes and looked down without apparent condemnation.

"What is your interest in this golden woman?"

"Please, learned master," Spock gulped for breath once more, "she is embarking on a very dangerous expedition! I must stop her!"

If the old man could have laughed then and there, he would have. But in an instant his arched brows lowered again, and the wrinkles on his face rearranged themselves into more sedate vertical and horizontal lines.

"And why is this?"

The little boy glanced over his shoulder, as if he were being pursued.

"I am in receipt of a message of great importance," the five-year old said, as if starting all over again, with complete sincerity, and still a bit of breathless excitement.

"About this woman, this student of mine," T'Mara nodded.

"Yes."

"And what has this to do with me, perhaps?"

"This is as far back as I could go, to reach her. You must go the rest of the distance!"

At this, T'Mara stood up very straight and imposingly once more, his face becoming hard, almost angry. He swept past the boy without so much as a fare-thee-well. But, of course, the five-year-old Spock followed again.

"You must help. It is a matter of the utmost importance!"

"The bell does not ring itself, little one," was all the professor would say, as he disappeared into a throng of passing students, going in all different directions. The crowds of tall people seemed determined to block the boy no matter which way he went: left or right; and each interference demanded some new, skittering change of direction on those slippery boot heels. His face was constantly brushing against tall legs rushing or stopping arbitrarily, everywhere around him.

Somehow, the Vulcan child knew this "ringing bell" allusion was a remark of great significance: and that perhaps he had heard it before. Or, would hear it again, many years in the future. For time now revealed itself as the great forge, bending and hammering and folding and tempering us all, folding past and future together, tempering each one into something perfectly integrated across time; and pounding away all throughout one's life. From this moment on, he became aware that the hammering never fully ceased within his soul as he struggled to make peace, and a place, for himself.

"What does it mean," Spock insisted, tugging the professor's heavy robes, once he had darted between dozens of pairs of black cadet's trousers, which sliced his vision like dark scissors, until persistence stitched his path together once more.

"The bell does not ring itself?" T'Mara turned, in the midst of the rushing students, to look down on the little boy. "It means we can never trust our own motives—if you are acting on behalf of some strange voice you have heard, or expect me to change my own past to suit you, according to the will of some unknown person from many years in the future, you should wonder who is pulling the bell cord in summons, and why. And how undignified it is to serve any selfish desire."

The boy-Spock only furrowed his brow, for this was clearly a lot of grown-up nonsense.

Finally T'Mara sighed, picking up the little one in his arm, and proceeding down the hall to his next class. The old Vulcan kept his steely gaze straight ahead, as another thought occurred to him.

"There is another meaning, but it is not for children. Not even for children who may be… possessed… by their own future selves," he added, as he carried the boy along through the crowd.

Spock could only blink in polite disinterest at that observation, as he bounced against the professor's shoulder, swaying like a man riding a camel. The concept of possession, other than perhaps 'self-possession,' was fundamentally hostile to their shared heritage.

And soon they stood in another auditorium, with different colors of wood and carpet, but the same essential dimensions and raised platform, down at the bottom of the round hall. Apparently there was still time to talk, as the students had yet to arrive.

The little Spock wandered into the very center of the speaker's dais, and turned around to survey the still rows of seating, rising up all around. Clearly, he was too early for an audience. Or, too late, considering that the golden woman must have left on her doomed voyage, before he ever was born.

"Now," T'Mara sighed, his hands clasped over his waist, in a pose of patience, "perhaps you will tell me of this great, important message. And why you would attempt to turn back the expedition of my greatest human student."

And, in spite of himself, the half-Vulcan boy smiled, at being the center of attention, or at his sudden realization of the sheer improbability of it all. And then, unconsciously or not, he also clasped his hands over his waist, and cocked his head just so, like T'Mara.

"You heard a voice," the old man prompted, calmly.

The boy nodded, gazing out into the rows and rows of empty seats, rising high like stormy seas all around, frozen in place for a second before swallowing them up.

"It came to you, unbidden," T'Mara said. "It came from the center of your mind."

"Gently," Spock said, as if pondering something very still.

"And it spoke."

"Like it had always been there. But listening, till now."

T'Mara nodded. "Internal telepathy, some call it," he said, not entirely pleased by the idea. He spoke very gently, but authoritatively now: "One does not meddle in one's own past lightly."

"It was not a light thing, learned master!" The little Spock now dropped all pretense of being a grand lecturer himself.

"Continue."

"'Go and tell Professor T'Mara to stop Vina Orwell. She has embarked upon a doomed expedition, and it will doom many innocent lives, as well. Many!'" And, after repeating the words of that silent, steady voice in his head, the voice of immutable certainty, he turned to look the professor straight in the eye, in the usual Vulcan manner.

"But she has left, already. Fifteen years, eight months, and fourteen days ago," T'Mara said, without any particular sense of regret over the boy's bad timing. "I believe the additional mission count-up is six hours, thirty-seven minutes, fifty-one standard seconds. But I was not paying close attention."

At this, the little boy paused, trying to find something else to say, something else to ask, something else to do to be rid of that shocking sensation, waking up from sleep to an all-too-familiar voice, coming from within: so immediate and intimate, from the night before. His gaze wove its way across the hall, beseeching the empty seats all around, and he made a pensive gesture with his hands, fingers tying and untying in his little fists.

But he was stuck with this awful sense of obligation, and apparently could not give it away. He finally nodded a little, not particularly enjoying his first truly grown-up moment; and gradually seemed to become absorbed in some internal calculation, trying to pack it away, or accept it as a layer of his own mental geology, if he could. There was no one to help, and no one willing to understand. He would have to think upon it further.

Not long after, his eyes suddenly raced back to those of the old Vulcan physicist, with a sudden urgency, as if he realized there was another route to what the future demanded of him. Just as instantly, the professor's expression became hard again, quietly taking control of the situation.

"Do not trouble me with your inspirations, young one," was all T'Mara said, holding up a steady hand, with long fingers. Gradually, those fingers separated themselves between the middle and fourth digit, in the familiar Vulcan salute, as if to dismiss the child before the class had ever begun. But even as T'Mara silently wished him "long life and prosperity," a door far above them was thrown open with a youthful "bang" by the first cadets to enter the class.

"Perhaps the bell rings itself in warning," the boy said quietly, as both of them turned at the sudden intrusion from above. "Perhaps the bell falls from a burning tower, to sound its death knell across the times, learned master. Unto thee."

At this clever bit of imagery, T'Mara nodded slightly, and pursed his lips. Then, the little boy tilted his head and squinted.

"What does that mean, learned master?"

"The burning bell-tower?"

"Yes."

T'Mara gazed silently at the child, as more and more cadets came stomping in, all around the crown of the stadium-like room, and slowly descended the steps like candle wax, pouring gracelessly down the aisles, toward another impenetrable lecture in imaginary physics.

Now T'Mara turned his back on most of the students, and knelt to speak quietly, directly to the boy, down at his own eye-level.

"It means that some emergencies are so great, that some of the disastrous decisions we have lived with for many years will eventually, inevitably demand a very high cost of one's own descendants… that the very structures of our civilization must cry out a warning, like the bell of a burning public hall, as it finally crashes down upon the rocks and ruins from above: in the instant when it becomes the final realization of disaster."

For a strange instant, as T'Mara spoke, his own words seemed to convict him, and exonerate the little boy of the charge of meddling in future and past. The elderly professor's fierce expression wandered away slightly, as if he couldn't see the students filling the rows behind the boy, who had himself become the unexpected intersection of great events. And, after a moment's consideration, T'Mara returned his steady, challenging gaze to the child.

"Who has told you of the burning bell-tower?" Now the students up above them were sitting down, listening silently to the strange conversation.

"No one, learned master!"

"And who is Vina Orwell?"

"One of your students, learned master." The students continued to stream in, from the doors up above, filling more and more of the seats all around.

"And you suggest some… obligation, on my part, to prevent her from taking some action, or other…"

"From her terrible expedition," the boy Spock interrupted, innocent of any charge of over-dramatics—but merely describing the height of urgency of what he'd received in the middle of the night before.

T'Mara nodded, gracious in the chubby little face of correction. To all the students who now filled the auditorium, it must have looked very much like the professor had become the pupil of this tiny boy, who clasped his little hands over his Western attire, in an attitude of thoughtful repose. Then, just like that, the boy stepped backward and bowed to the master.

"But I must not intrude upon your patience any further," the little Spock said, as their moment on the platform had begun to seem embarrassing, somehow. "My mother will be expecting me in four point three one minutes."

"Ah, then you must be off." T'Mara nodded, instantly calculating the child must have taken that exact amount of time to search him out in the first place, given the length of their strange visit, fifty-one point four minutes all-told, including that ridiculous chase down a crowded corridor.

And then, with astonishing simplicity, the old Vulcan gave a slow, sweeping gesture around him and spoke plainly, barely acknowledging all the 250 cadets now seated above him: "class is dismissed for the day."

There was a gasp of surprise that echoed throughout the hall, and the small Vulcan and the great one both hurried down through the instructor's tunnel, one in little cowboy boots he would never wear again; and the other sweeping out of sight in a jeweled robe that might soon be taken from him, for what he was about to do. They disappeared behind another clanging door, down into the shadows, before parting to go their separate ways.

"Look, sir, I don't want to be rude," the bartender finally said, slinging his white towel over his shoulder, as if he'd made a great decision at last, "but if you don't want to buy a drink, you're gonna have to leave."

It was nearly sixteen years earlier now, and a somewhat less elderly Professor T'Mara stared at the barkeep, before ordering a full 10 ounce glass of vodka, neat: as plain and clear as logic itself, despite the usual effect of it on the pre-frontal cortex. The drink was also a good deal clearer than the strange message that had come to him the night before, in the absolute solitude of meditation.

Nearly everyone else in the bar had left, since he'd come in: cadets eager to blow-off steam after a long week of classes and studies, just downed their drinks and fled from the presence of one of a stern Vulcan professor. But he had still not seen the young woman he'd come looking for. And so he waited.

T'Mara had begun to notice bells, however, all around the Starfleet campus that he'd never quite seen before. The latest was a pair of them, carved on a wooden plaque above the tavern door. Earlier that night he'd passed a small white clapboard church building on campus, with a modest bell tower on the roof. Quite out of place, but charming nonetheless. He imagined thousands of people going in there, over the last hundreds of years, seeking ways to be merciful, and to pursue a simpler internal life, in their own ways, hoping to bundle all their human grievances off into some alternate locus of dimensions in some hoped-for afterlife.

And in spite of the strange warning he'd "received" the night before, to find one adventurous student, that church bell-tower had still not come crashing down to Earth. But in that flash he did see some barely discernable, hideous danger for the young Ms. Orwell, for herself and many others, should she embark on a long period of deep-space research.

Then, without showing any trace of surprise, he turned to see the familiar face of the blond Earth girl, right by his side, at last.

"They told me you were here! Is everything all right?" she asked, looking amused and quizzical all at the same time as she hopped up on a barstool.

"I am in the awkward position of making an argument that has nothing at all to do with logic, Dr. Orwell," he said, not seeming very pleased with the situation.

She cocked her head and squinted a bit, then burst out laughing.

"If it was anybody else, learned master, I'd say you were trying to pick me up!"

He looked at her with that strange male combination of woundedness and disdain, at being utterly misunderstood. Or perhaps Vulcan faces were just made that way.

She looked around again, at the bleak, but brightly lit bar.

"Wow, I've never seen it so dead on a Friday night."

"There were twenty seven people here, not including myself or the bartender, when I first arrived," T'Mara said, without any particular interest or sense of accountability.

"They must have seen you and run away like a bunch of mice under a big hungry owl," Vina smiled again, imagining the students trying to unwind, in the presence of a dour Vulcan.

Then she composed herself again, trying to forget they were essentially in a college town beer hall at all, for a moment. Then, in spite of her efforts, another handful of students came roaring in. They, in turn, fell utterly silent at the sight of the severe old professor. And, just like that, they turned and walked out as one, as if they'd accidentally crashed a funeral. The bartender finally slumped against the back shelf in utter defeat.

"Oh, may I have one of those, too," she said, feeling sorry for the man in the white apron, now left with just two very serious customers. The bartender started pouring, even as her old professor spoke very quietly, and his fierce countenance drew her full attention.

"A strange thing happened last night," he began; looking involuntarily at the full, clear glass of vodka in front of him. "I was 'spoken to' by what I believe to have been myself, from across time, from the future. We call it 'a shadow-reflection,' on Vulcan—an image of the self that is not there, by one's own construction or volition—but which is nevertheless a truer image of one's self than any outsider could ever hope to construct, for dark purposes of deceit."

It was exceedingly rare that a Vulcan would discuss the internal workings of his own mind with a human so, of course, Vina became even more engrossed in what he was saying, even as she reached out and took the glass of clear liquid the bartender had just set before her. She sipped, and swallowed, and then gave that familiar gasping cough, as the vodka stripped away all the natural lubricants of her esophagus.

"It is pure grain alcohol. Forgive me," T'Mara said, still looking pensively forward, as she turned and coughed louder and louder, face turning red. He agonized silently, now convinced that, somehow, none of this was in the proper time-line. He should have called her into his office the next day, but he really wasn't exactly sure how much longer she'd be on campus, or even if he might simply have talked himself out of the whole matter before he ever had a chance to meet her in time.

Finally, she turned back, wiping her eyes, and checking her hair in the mirror behind the bar, along the wall facing them. Her face was still red from coughing.

"You are about to embark upon a long voyage," he said, not knowing that every bad fortuneteller, throughout all of human history, had always begun the exact same way.

"Yes?" She hadn't told him yet. In fact, she'd only just received the confirmation a day before. But perhaps he'd had some favorable influence on the science-team's decision to include her on the expedition. She smiled knowingly, wanting to thank him for his kind intervention. But her wistful sense of gratitude was suddenly ripped away by his next words.

"You must not go."

Now she paused, furrowed her brow, and picked up the drink she'd just put down. And after a few nervous little sips, some unidentified rage within her wanted to throw the drink in his unapologetic Vulcan face. On top of that, at some point in the last minute or two, the jukebox had run out of music, and the gaudiness of the lights and the shining of the bottles all around seemed like part of a frightening carnival at night. And a queasiness in the pit of her stomach came from the sudden violation of all her years of hard work and planning.

"Why would you say such a thing?"

"This 'shadow-reflection' I spoke of," he said, looking directly into her clear blue eyes. "It is a thing of the utmost personal nature to my people, and can only be transferred, in an almost primordial manner, between one's own future and past selves, during periods of intense meditation."

"I—that sounds a little crazy." She lifted the vodka to her lips again, and took a slightly bigger sip. The glass stayed hovered there by her chin, in case she should need it again right away.

"Undoubtedly," T'Mara agreed.

"What possible reason could you give me for not going?" She was actually beginning to feel a little bit like crying, as unscientific as that might have been.

"Only the extreme urgency of the communication."

"From the past?"

"Into the past," T'Mara corrected her, simply, looking at his reflection, again, in the bar-back.

"Meaning, from the future," she prodded, trying not to sound impatient or contemptuous of his exactitude.

"That is the only possible explanation. It is such a deeply personal thing—"

"Now wait a minute," Vina shook her head. "It seems like _everything_ is deeply personal to Vulcans. Anything I'd call normal and human, you'd call deeply personal and embarrassing. That doesn't make it any more valid or any less ridiculous than anything anybody else might throw out in some casual conversation." She was becoming more and more animated, after drinking an ounce or two.

"Perhaps. But if you were to delay your mission, or possibly take another direction in your research…"

"How is that going to change the future?" She was practically shouting now. "The future already has a shape, defined by everything that's come before—it may not be constant, but everyone's subject to the same laws of equal and opposite reactions! Every religion, every philosophy, bends its knee to the laws of thermodynamics! Karma, reciprocity, call it what you will!" She sounded like a Vulcan, even to her own rounded little ears.

T'Mara nodded very slightly, before speaking again. As usual, physics was also his own last resort for illustration, and he began with an analogy to quantum physics, which are the smallest, and the briefest interactions, between the tiniest particles and forces and waves.

"One must consider the very extreme conditions that can operate at exceedingly small levels, for very short periods of time. You and I are exceedingly small in the vast scope of the Universe. We are, in our day-to-day decision-making, the quantum mechanics of all creation.

"And, it is my firm belief," he continued, "that you are bound to face extreme conditions if you embark upon this journey, opening the path to a larger breakdown in what is otherwise the most logical shape of things to come. Extending far beyond your own personal dimensions, out to the very depth and breadth of the galaxy itself. Possibly for centuries to come: a quantum shift, if you will."

"That's pretty fancy talk, even for a Vulcan," she said quietly, with a note of bitterness in her voice, as he persisted in ripping her plans to shreds. And, almost mechanically, she took another sip of her drink. But, in spite of everything, she began to feel a strange sympathy for the poker-faced extraterrestrial, sadly possessed by his own strange demons.

"Look," she resumed, "I know you wouldn't go to all this trouble for no reason."

T'Mara nodded slightly, looking past her, to the bells over the front door of the bar.

"What if I promise to be very, very careful," she smiled.

"You would not be the first Earth woman ever to say that to me," the stern old professor said, with a grim little sigh, which was somehow irresistible to her.

"Yeah, I bet," she said, managing a laugh. Another gaggle of cadets burst in the door of the bar, and Vina tried not to jump at the explosion of youthful, undergrad noise. She glanced over her shoulder as casually as she could, embarrassed at the idea of being seen with one of her professors. But, considering his race, there could hardly be any scandal attached.

"Look I, uh, have to take a walk—and think this over," Vina sighed, slipping off the bar stool and passing by the younger students streaming in. T'Mara left a generous tip on the bar and followed her as the bartender heaved a sigh of relief, and started taking drink orders from this new crowd.

She knew T'Mara had followed her, like some lovesick freshman… except he wasn't a lovesick freshman, which made it all the more puzzling. She certainly didn't feel in any immediate danger, as she strode across the campus, barely sensing his silent pursuit.

Finally, in the midst of a wooded lawn between far-flung groups of great buildings, she stopped and waited for him to catch up.

"Why do I get the impression you'll follow me out into space, if I go through with this?" she smiled, into the darkness behind her. The Vulcan, in his robes, emerged from the shadows of the trees, stepping forward in a light mist from the nearby San Francisco bay.

"I do not wish to steal any of the adventure or even the human glory that is due to you," he said quietly, and the sound of his voice carried with almost no reverberation in the early fog: almost as if he were speaking quietly, directly, into her ear.

"Of course not," she said, even more quietly, looking off at the halos that were taking shape around the path lights amidst the trees. The softness of the air, and his new, gentler approach made the decision a bit more painful: forcing her to choose to abandon her mission, or to her mentor, all in one night.

"But there is something—many things—lurking out there, beyond the common dangers." He folded his hands across each other, till they disappeared in his huge sleeves.

"What of it? Has that ever stopped any Vulcan from his mission?"

"No." T'Mara said, now walking again, past Vina. "But to live without emotion is not to be a sociopath." He turned to face her again, as if addressing her from the future. "I would be derelict and depraved, were I not to tell you of the extreme danger I have seen."

"Ahead, for me," Vina said, looking down into the grass at her feet.

"Yes." He simply started walking again, and she hurried after.

"What have you seen?" It put crescents of tears in her eyes, like cold, curving scythes. Which ever she chose, for whatever reason, she realized, she was apt to feel a fool when the conversation was finally done. Though this was often the case, when Vulcans were involved.

She caught up, and could see the spreading fog had not yet softened his hawk-like stare.

"It is an intensely… embarrassing thing, this shadow-reflection," T'Mara said.

"Why?"

T'Mara only squinted slightly, not taking the bait. Finally, she nodded a bit.

"I used to have a boyfriend," she said, after this long standoff, "who liked to… enjoy himself… in front of a mirror."

T'Mara only looked away, suggesting there might indeed be a parallel between the two self-absorptions. His own version of private Vulcan shame gave her a moment to clear her mind. Then she spoke again.

"I suppose that you, or any race of telepaths must have to have some pretty high standards on privacy, if you're going to stay in existence for very long."

And just then, somehow, her words produced a stunning effect: totally unexpected to her. It was as if she'd added one benign liquid to another, and triggered a shocking explosion in her professor's head.

T'Mara stopped at once—and even seemed dizzy for a strange moment, as if Vina had said something that resonated across time, into the future—far off, beyond his encounter with the little half-human boy, some sixteen years later. It was a dizziness that had nothing to do with embarrassment or fog or self-absorption. She stepped forward, and he swayed again, in the misty commons.

"I see it now!" he said very quietly, filled with humble reckoning, his lips apart. His hands re-appeared from his sleeves, as he spread them in the thickening air. She led him to a bench under an ornamental street lamp where, finally, he spoke.

"You said it," he added, seeming strangely fragile, and even astonished—as if he were in the middle of a long, dense conversation that only he could hear, or trying to make sense of some cleverly written contract, which he could barely read himself. "Something that you will encounter on your expedition," he added.

"Telepathy… and privacy," she said, trying to remember what exact words had triggered this sudden spell.

"Yes," he said, slowly. It was as if he feared to speak—feared to lose the sudden insight into the future: like waking from a dream, and then going stock-still: beseeching the dream not to evaporate. She peered off, as well, into the mist, over his shoulder.

"I will 'encounter' something that involves those two things," she said.

"Yes," he nodded, furrowing his brow.

"But how can you tell this, just from a few dream-like images?"

"It is the context, as well as the content—telepathy is part of the meaning!" the professor snapped, as if suddenly impatient with an un-focused student. He had turned to her, emphatically, and gradually she picked up his train of thought again.

"Vulcan presents no danger because it has telepathy, but also values privacy," she said, slowly figuring it out—squinting out into the fog again, "but something out there involves telepathy, and… _hates_ privacy. And that's what poses a great danger to me… and, apparently, to many other people as well."

"Evidently," the professor sighed quietly, as if finally exhaling his own vapor of alcohol, or a wraith of mysticism that disappeared in the mist.

"But why would any race of people, or entity, or even machine, want to get inside our thoughts, or impose its own thoughts, or…"

"Your own history is shot-through with examples of governments and belief systems that have done precisely this, usually for monetary gain, or sexual compulsion, or to stave off some sense of cultural failure," he said abruptly, almost angrily.

"But now, with the wealth of ten billion worlds out there," Vina shook her head, as if this dire oracle might be irrelevant to them in the present day—as if his insight was merely some dry old water pump in a long forgotten ghost town…

"The freedom of a wealthy Federation of Planets," T'Mara scowled, dismissing her modern economics at once, "is only relevant to the handful of races that can cross the vast distances between stars, in less than many lifetimes!" He wrinkled his nose, contemptuously, at all that "galactic empire of freedom" nonsense, and the danger she seemed to seek out in that contrary, human manner.

"But if a race of telepaths were unable to escape their own planet," she insisted, "all they'd have to do is attract a ship, somehow take it over, and—theoretically—gain immense power."

Finally, T'Mara turned and looked at her, with that withering Vulcan solemnity.

"'_Somehow'_?" He seemed aghast. "Is this the scientific training I imparted to you?" He grew impatient all over again, shifting around on the bench in the fog. "What if that ship must be your own," he asked. "What if the warning from the future demands you obey?"

She turned away, without speaking, and took a few steps into the mist.

"There is also an economy of the spirit: of vision; of dreams, beyond this 'wealth of ten billion worlds," he said quietly. "There is always the economy of spirit, we labor and spend our passions on, so recklessly."

He squinted a bit, seated on the bench, as if gazing through the mist toward the unspeakable wickedness of telepathy abused. "A poor man can be rich in spirit; just as a rich man may squander all his dreams, before he falls into darkness. A world that trades fantasy for spirit, and self-indulgence for vision, will collapse into itself, before it ever learns it must be constantly reaching out!"

His hands had grasped out into the fog, as if to catch some faint sprite, as she watched. It was the picture of a world that had lost its grip on reality.

"You're saying I end up… where the dreams—and even the dreamers themselves—have become the currency," she said, feeling strangely strangulated by the thought. "But how could that possibly be kept up? Their illusions would only starve them—"

"They could be sustained indefinitely, given the proper technology!" T'Mara spat, becoming adamant again; and Vina came and sat by his side, feeling confused.

"And this warning from the future: in it I end up as one of their… commodities? And somehow, this spreads across to many other worlds. Many other races? All just living somebody else's dreams?"

They sat there, in the wet white air, which grew more and more impenetrable, as if time and vision and even the future itself were being robbed from them. Buildings across the quadrangle were colorless, like sheets of paper in a heavy snow.

"But," she insisted, "shouldn't I try to engage them, if only to put a stop to them?"

"It would be foolish unto fatality," T'Mara whispered, shaking his head.

Now Vina stood again, wrapping her arms around herself, either for warmth or for protection. She was filled with nervousness, and a sense of being trapped.

"But what you're really saying is…" she began, trying not to let her anxiety get the better of her, despite the haunted-look of the empty campus, "is that I should never go out into space at all! That I should give up my hopes and dreams and ambitions, and training and preparation! That the entire fate of the galaxy just happens to depend on me, staying stuck down here like some mollusk, living in fear, to avoid opening a trap… for many others to fall into. When someone else is bound to do just exactly the same thing anyway, sooner or later!"

He would not look at her, and she would not stop trying to engage him, in her growing, frantic outrage.

"Even though you must know the galaxy is here for our exploration, you're sitting there, saying this is my only fate; my predetermined fate, out of a hundred billion stars? Does that even begin to sound 'logical' to you, in the smallest degree?"

Finally, he straightened his robes, as if he was about to stand and go.

"We are extrapolating far beyond the scope of my vision," he muttered.

But it was too late, and Vina had grown anguished—even horrified—at feeling hemmed-in by the unaccountable superstitions of those above her station. She stood there, half bending down over her learned master, her arms folded across her mid-section.

"Do you really think I could just give up on my studies, my research, my—my dreams, like that? Because of some hand-me-down Vulcan witchcraft?"

"Call it what you will," T'Mara said, unperturbed. Looking undeniably disappointed, or defeated, he finally got up from the bench and walked away, disappearing after only a few meters.

"Forewarned is forearmed," Vina insisted, as if she had somehow been magically alerted and inoculated by his warning, or as if she might suddenly have gained the knowledge to prevent any intrusive, telepathic evil from ever coming upon her.

But she really didn't feel any more forearmed than before.

Then she saw him again, or perhaps another figure in Vulcan robes, racing past. But it couldn't have been him, as this person was running too youthfully, too fluidly, and T'Mara was just a stately old man. In the confusion, Vina was lost in a fog of her own: for this new robed Vulcan, trailing rippling mists, was coming out of the wrong direction—southeast, opposite from the way T'Mara had just vanished, and seemed to be following him, quite rapidly indeed.

And as the unexpected figure went rushing by, the astonished Vina realized that it was another one of her Vulcan professors: her programming advisor, T'Lan. And that second Vulcan was carrying a phaser.

41

41

_By Richard T. Green_


	2. Chapters 3, 4 and 5

_Vina Escaped II: Green Blood, Red Blood_

**Chapter Three **

"I thought I just saw one of my Vulcan professors chasing another Vulcan professor… with a phaser!" Vina was breathless by the time she stopped trying to catch T'Lan in the fog, and her communicator screen finally opened to show the face of a security guard in an office somewhere on campus.

"Uh, Ms. Orwell, the sensor on your phone shows you've been drinking," was all the campus guard would say. But a little twist in his tone of voice suggested he was almost laughing at her claim. Then he simply stared back, more or less impassively from the palm of her hand, waiting for the next wild pronouncement.

"Okay. Forget it," she said, catching her breath and closing the top on the device before starting out after them. Clearly, it was going to be a long night, as she went dashing one way, and then another. Then she realized that she was heading into entirely the wrong quadrangle to find either T'Mara or T'Lan, under normal circumstances, at this time of night. Brushing the blond hair out of her eyes, she hurried back across the lawn, certain she was bound to trip over a bench in the fog at any moment, or stumble over a pair of young lovers sprawled out on the grass.

As she ran, she caught sight of a groundskeeper's hover-trolley, unattended, parked in an alley between buildings. She jumped in the driver's seat and flew it up about five meters into the thick white air. After she studied the controls, she turned off the vehicle's headlights and nudged it into motion. A large pile of tree limbs were stacked in the floating carrier behind her, and she wondered if the landscaper might still be up one of the trees she was snaking around, before she cleared the near-surface. Sure enough…

"Hey!" a voice called, from below—she didn't stop to look, but it must have been the tree trimmer himself, coming out of one of the buildings in a great rush.

_Now what_, she asked herself, as she flew up over the halls and dormitories, just barely above the fog. She could see the much taller main towers of the Academy behind her, to the right, and the white cloudy plain of San Francisco Bay out to the left.

What on Earth would possess a stern rationalist like Professor T'Lan to go after T'Mara, a member of her own race, with a phaser? It didn't make any sense… unless an overall air of madness had swallowed them all up that night.

And why, she wondered, would T'Mara claim the future of the entire galaxy hung on her own shoulders? On whether or not she left the planet? Now, after she'd been planning it out so carefully for the last ten years?

But, if one Vulcan could reach back in time to communicate a warning, she supposed any of them could… bad taste or not… She was hovering over another quadrangle, looking for signs of movement down in the cloud below, jeweled robes swaying in the fog that rippled around the very top meter of trees beneath her. The black, craggy branches reached up through the flowing white: _my future, all around me,_ she thought coldly, as the sharp branches seemed to reach up to snare her.

Then up she went, over the roofs of dormitories, and down into the next courtyard. Except that, tonight, the only clear way open was straight up, into space. The cold night sky, and the unshakable stars, shone down with absolute clarity, and she wanted to go higher now, as soon as possible. Everything that really disturbed her would be left far below. She wished the hovercraft could just shoot straight up, a hundred quadrillion miles, right this minute. It would really simplify everything.

Then, without any other warning, the main screen on her dashboard began flashing red, and she knew she'd been caught. The craft was being shut down, and descending slowly. She leapt and caught a branch in a tree before the seat dropped out from under her, and the vehicle descended into the mist. She hung there, watching as the groundskeeper stirred up a few clear streaks, hurrying to catch his vehicle as it landed gently. Then she wrapped herself against the tree limb, trying to become unseen. Its unmovable strength was strangely comforting. And the groundskeeper drove off, back to his work.

So here she was, destined to become the greatest threat to all known space, if T'Mara was right: quite simply caught up a tree.

And when she was sure she was alone again, Vina climbed down to find herself on hallowed ground.

The quaint white church was white in the white fog, and almost invisible. But just at the moment she caught sight of it, a strong pair of male hands grabbed her from behind, shoving her up the wooden chapel steps, as if she were suddenly thrown into a nightmare version of a storybook wedding.

And she knew, even before she turned around, it was old T'Mara: pushing her in, apologizing all the while, even as he lifted her up off the steps, hoisted her through the entryway and carried her all the way in to the sanctuary, toward the darkened altar up ahead.

"I'm terribly sorry, terribly sorry, but logic sometimes makes strange demands of us, beyond the context of our regular expectations and deportment," he was saying, holding her up like a shield, as he peered around her, toward the altar, a good thirty meters up the aisle, between all the humble, white-painted pews in the dim light.

And there was the shadowy form of T'Lan, standing far up on the altar, like an unforgiving minister: holding that phaser straight at them, in the standard "kill shot" pose, her Vulcan head tilted back slightly, peering down the aisle at them in the near-dark.

"Your behavior betrays a lack of confidence, my colleague," T'Lan said, in a perfectly calm tone of voice. She held the phaser with absolute determination, across the glow of the tall windows on either side of the pews.

"My behavior is well within the bounds of logic, based on a shadow reflection I am in receipt of," T'Mara said, equally politely, from behind his bewildered hostage, suspended in mid-air. Slowly he carried her forward, out ahead of him.

"Release my student," T'Lan commanded, still quietly, phrasing each word very distinctly.

"If you shoot her, you will only fulfill my own obligation to all our shared tomorrows," T'Mara argued politely, holding Vina effortlessly, about halfway up to the altar. His human shield made pinpoint phaser accuracy nearly impossible for T'Lan, who was really aiming at him.

Each Vulcan brandished something at the other—whether a beautiful girl or a deadly weapon. And the empty pews spread all around in neat white rows, the glow of the fog outside casting barely enough light for this ruthless business to be conducted, based on what little the future dared speak.

You could just make out T'Lan's face: examining each possible future scenario, one by one. T'Mara, for example, could simply carry his hostage backward, out the way he'd come; or out through one of the nearer side exits, in the shadows. He could even approach T'Lan more closely, if he could manage to hide his greater bulk behind the much smaller Earth girl… So, T'Lan seemed to be thinking, he would not voluntarily choose to come any closer.

With that in mind, the Vulcan woman stepped forward without any further compunction, down from the church stage. And, of course, T'Mara began backing up, with Vina dangling in mid-air.

"How long do you think you can maintain such a ridiculous pose," the Vulcan woman said quietly, passing in and out of narrow shafts of light, each window trimmed in gold and green and blue stained glass, the colors barely emanating against the gray outside. T'Lan's thin arm, and the phaser extended from the sleeve of her robe, passed in and out of the light on either side.

"Long enough to prevent at least one mortal danger from threatening my student;" T'Mara answered, "and long enough to protect the galaxy from the dangers that await her, in her travels," he added.

Then, in mid-air, Vina watched as the church seemed to gently disgorge her, out the way she'd come, as the white pews retreated forward, like waves rushing out to sea, even as the Vulcan woman marched toward her, never once lowering her weapon.

Another uneasy silence, as she was held out between them.

"I am forced to conclude, my colleague," T'Mara observed, "that you, yourself, have also been the recipient of a shadow reflection: a message from the future, perhaps intended to maintain the status quo, far beyond our own days."

"Indeed," the woman scientist nodded, as if something so obvious merited any mention.

"Then in coming here," T'Mara almost sounded pleasant, as if he were amused by the complexities of time travel, "you have already changed the past you cherish so."

"Let it be so," T'Lan said, quiet and unafraid, as she marched toward them with the phaser.

"Look, doctors, my learned masters," Vina tried to bargain, gamely, as she dangled between them like shark bait. "I really have no intention of living my life on Earth, this worn-out little rock I was born onto, any more than either of you, since you left your own world. You both trained me to go out there, out into the galaxy. Surely you can't want to just throw all of your efforts away."

"We scatter our seed on the ground," T'Mara said, behind her, still sounding pleasant and confident—but speaking practically in her ear, "and only a few pupils ever really grow into anything of the slightest significance at all. Inevitably, so much… so very much of our effort… is wasted." He seemed strangely philosophical about her own impending doom.

He had almost carried her all the way back out into the white fog, out of the peaceful church, out into the dreamy blanket of a ground-hugging cloud: backwards, out of the sanctuary, into the vestibule; backward, through the big wooden doors, with its long black hammered hinges. Backward, onto the steps outside.

Then the big wooden doors swung shut on their own, with a _thud_. T'Mara placed Vina gently on the ground—and ran off.

Instantly, T'Lan burst through the door, nearly knocking her down. Both women hurried down the wooden steps together. And then the Vulcan, with her phaser held out, dashed off: first right and then left, till she too disappeared: flapping robes and pointed ears and all.

Vina watched, or waited (as there was really nothing to be seen now) behind a tree: a hard, gnarled black trunk she could hold on to, against the damp white air.

It was like a very strange dream, everything straining to stay real in the mist, yet disappearing just the same, including the white church: just ten or fifteen meters to her right… closer than most of the trees, yet more unreal. For a moment she wondered if she might already be dead.

And then, with an unexpected sense of resolve, she was really looking forward to being absolutely, completely alone, during the next six weeks of deep-space training.

But the next morning, she woke to check her computer and found her name had been erased from the training schedule.

She stormed into T'Mara's office twenty minutes later, barely dressed, in the cool morning light: her corn-silk hair wrapped in a scarf, and a black trench coat tied over her underwear.

T'Mara looked up from his little desk as if nothing were amiss.

"I've been taken out of the mission," she said, as simply and calmly as she could manage, which was really not all that calmly, under the circumstances.

"Ah, what a pity," her male Vulcan advisor nodded, turning only half-toward her, from where he'd been examining another student's work on a terminal.

"You've made completely sure that I'd never leave this planet," she said, closing the office door behind her, as if that might somehow intimidate a Vulcan. He only turned back to his computer, to someone else's dissertation.

"As you know, there is suddenly a great deal of interest in your planned voyage," he answered, not even regarding her.

"Nowhere, more so, than inside this very office," she nodded, furrowing her brow.

"Undoubtedly," he agreed. Finally, he looked up at her.

"I'm going on that mission," Vina said, angry but still managing to speak in an even, measured tone.

"That particular mission appears to be closed to new enrollees, Dr. Orwell," was all the professor would say.

"I am _not _a 'new enrollee,'" she snarled, finally giving up on the "logical" approach.

"Of course," T'Mara said, tilting his head, as if it was her only course of action, "but when new facts come to light, or new evidence is received, the qualifications of any enrollee may be called into question all over again."

"You're talking about that Vulcan self-reflection!" she said, trying not to shriek in anger at whatever sleight-of-hand he may have pulled-off since last night, or perhaps even before they met at that bar.

"_Shadow_ reflection," T'Mara said, quietly, as if he'd grown bored with it all.

After a moment, she realized he'd made up his mind to ignore her, but still she couldn't stop herself from slamming his office door when she stalked out into the halls of Starfleet Academy once again. People turned to look, but it didn't make her feel any better.

Professor T'Lan didn't seem to be interested, either. Her office looked fairly similar, non-descript, like some world-renouncing nun, instead of an expert on computers and deep space exploration.

"Ah, yes, Dr. Orwell, what is it you want," T'Lan said, as if it might be the first time they'd ever met, and nothing like the final meeting of a wise old mentor and her brilliant pupil, at the culmination of years of hard study.

"I need your help—it seems to me you are… not as concerned about my leaving Earth as Professor T'Mara. That, in fact, you would be perfectly content for me to embark on my exploration—even though it might be a hazardous, or even… cataclysmic voyage?"

"You make it sound like a question," T'Lan said, allowing a patient little smile. But her dark Vulcan eyes were like smoldering coals on the lampstands of her cheekbones, and did not stray from the Earth woman's blue ones.

"I've been removed from the long-term training program—just overnight, as far as I can tell," Vina said, her eyes darting around the little office, at imaginary shadows in a conspiring fog.

"But you have been in training with me for four years, seven months, eighteen days, and seventeen minutes, including study weekends and various trial expeditions."

"The Federation won't let me go out there without six weeks of in-depth training," Vina explained, though T'Lan herself knew this perfectly well, and it only made Vina sound desperate to mention it. There was a strange little pause, as if the Vulcan programming expert was waiting for a more precise calculation of the mission training time, up or down from the general estimate of "six weeks." But her thoughtful pause turned out to be for something else, entirely.

"Perhaps you do not need this vaunted Federation," T'Lan said at last. Vina felt as though she'd been splashed with cold water.

"I'd like to do everything… the right way," she sighed, though a little smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, at the sudden idea that she might still get what she wanted.

"Why?" T'Lan asked, leaning back, almost sarcastically. "So that, in five years, perhaps ten, you would simply be a professor here, yourself? So you would have fulfilled everyone's minimal idea of success in your chosen field? Or so you might put some plaques or awards on the wall of some temporary office, hundreds of light-years from your own home world? For strangers to… 'admire'?"

And, as Vina glanced around again, she became more aware of the plaques and awards on T'Lan's own walls, which she'd had grown used to seeing over the years. Noticing them again now was a bit of a humiliation for the budding Earth scientist, and she realized that, technically, she didn't need any official honors to do what she really wanted.

But the idea of doing everything on her own, for the rest of her life, made her feel even more lonely than she would just crossing the galaxy in a tiny little bottle all by herself. The world of respectable researchers would treat her like a crank, or a fortune hunter, if she ever did manage to achieve anything of significance, outside the hierarchy of Starfleet Academy.

But, if she had to choose, the choice was clear: being inside the academic mainstream could not possibly be the final goal for her, or for any serious researcher. The Vulcan woman seemed to nod in agreement, as a look of realization crossed Vina's face. For, one day, perhaps quite soon, T'Lan herself would have to clean out her little cubicle and go back to her own studies on Vulcan—because, after all, what Vulcan would ever give themselves completely to Starfleet?

"If I go out there without the Federation's blessing," Vina said, trying to put something very personal into words, without sounding ambitious or proud, "I might just as well kiss my credentials goodbye. And how would I ever get the credits I need to fund a ship and a team and a traveling lab?"

"These 'credentials,' Dr. Orwell… they come with daring, and courage, and the steady success of survival," T'Lan was speaking so quietly Vina could barely hear—almost as if the Vulcan was thinking the words at her, especially considering that her thin lips barely moved as she spoke. "Everyone will know you completed your work here on the most honorable level, and that you were held to the highest standard, even by a Vulcan."

Somehow, only a Vulcan could get away with a pompous-sounding remark like that. But, there was no doubt about the truth of it.

"As for your ship," T'Lan resumed, "and your equipment," (here, she actually shrugged her narrow shoulders) "perhaps the design of the future has already allowed for that."

"Maybe _your _design for the future—other people disagree," Vina muttered.

But T'Lan merely turned back to her computer and clicked through a series of screens with the usual startling rapidity, as if she were some expert Peruvian weaver, dashing-off a colorful scarf at a loom. She tapped one more lighted button on her desk, and plucked a bright yellow computer memory plaque out of a slot beneath the view panel. But she barely looked up at the blond Earth woman as she handed it over, in her sharp fingernails. Then she simply turned back to her work, straightening her robes, and navigating back to a text screen, speeding through some new document or other.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" Vina asked, holding out the memory plaque in front of her. Suddenly, in her scarf and trench coat, she realized she was dressed like a spy, if only to cover her underwear and her uncombed hair.

The Vulcan woman paused, and recoiled a bit from her computer: seemingly surprised by the question. Then she raised both eyebrows. "Do what it says, young student."

Vina pocketed the yellow plaque and turned to go. But as she opened the office door and stepped out into the hall, she realized she'd have to look very closely at every new thing for years to come, and wonder, "is this the trap T'Mara spoke of?"

Either way, she was going off world after all, it seemed.

**Chapter Five **

She was still holding that yellow computer plaque the following morning—as she sipped a Turkish coffee in a little space-station café over the New South Pole: the painstaking restoration of the old continent, glowing huge and brilliant white through the glassy ceiling, where blue oceans came to meet along glistening icy shores.

Vina could have thrown it away, the memory plaque, but something told her to wait. For the moment, she'd hang on to it, in case nothing better came along… It would be her "genie in a bottle," if she got in trouble. A Vulcan genie, of course, which might not be of any help at all… Except to say "I told you so."

Then, of course, the same old thought came rushing back: _Throw it away_, _it's part of the trap. T'Lan's design for Vulcan's own status quo. And, by coincidence, something that guarantees your own peril, and your own role in somehow destroying the Federation. _

"No," she said, very quietly to herself, as she put the little cup down on its saucer. She squeezed the pocket of her coat, where the plaque was safely hidden, as if strangling the artery to that particular future. She was a scientist, at last, and she'd figure things out for herself, as she encountered them along the way. But she'd be smart about it. She let go of the flat rectangle in her pocket, and kept her gaze lowered.

"I beg your pardon?" a friendly male voice said, over her shoulder. She looked up in surprise.

"Oh, nothing," she said, returning to her view of the glowing home world, out beyond the great portals.

"Oops, sorry to interrupt. It just sounded like we were having an argument," the same voice said, and its owner, a handsome fellow with a moustache, leaned over from the next table. "And, I usually like to know what I'm arguing about, before I get too involved with strange young women."

She turned and looked at him—thinking the dirtiest thoughts she could come up with, on the spot like this, and furiously projecting the words loud and clear in her mind: _are you a telepath? _

His smile was maddening in its handsomeness, and unaffected insolence.

"I'm sorry, Miss, but if you want to look at me like that, you'll have to buy me a drink first. And something a lot stronger than that," he added, glancing down at her coffee. He seemed completely unfazed by her attempt at silent intimidation.

She laughed, in spite of herself, and in spite of the outrageous lengths she had to go to, to fulfill her plans to explore the galaxy.

"Sorry, I was just trying to see if you were a telepath."

"Well, it's nice of you to ask, before plunging right into my darkest male imaginings." He shook his head a little, and leaned back to fold his arms over his chest like a Pharaoh in his tomb, as if preparing for some potentially fatal mind-meld.

"I don't plunge," she smiled again, making a little fuss over her spoon and napkin, which she placed on the table, as if she were ready to get up and get out of the café at last. And, on her way to… well, she wasn't exactly sure.

"Well, I'm most certainly _not _a telepath, but if you're not one either, how could we ever possibly trust each other to really be telling the truth? How did your parents trust each other? How did mine? Well, they didn't, but that's another story. Anyway, if I _was_ a telepath, I'd probably have some kind of god-like feeling I was above telling you the truth, wouldn't I?"

Now she stopped playing with her spoon and napkin.

"Probably," she smiled, and squinting at him again in an appraising manner.

"Then I suppose you're not going to buy me a drink," he concluded, a little wistfully.

"Ha! I barely have enough to get off this space station myself, without a parachute!"

"Well, then, I'm loaded, comparatively speaking—I can buy us each three drinks, and then you and I can share a parachute on the way back down, when they throw us out of here for being drunk and disorderly!"

She laughed again, and he impetuously pulled his chair around to join her at her table.

"Then I assume your little argument was… with yourself, before I so rudely interrupted."

"Something like that," she sighed.

"Nothing wrong with arguing with yourself. As long as you win at least 50% of the time," he nodded, his eyes wandering across her lovely face, and then out to that big blue planet beyond, with the huge, virginal ice cap. Her eyes matched the Pacific.

"Was it anything serious?" he asked. "You're not going straight out of your mind right now, are you?"

"Not any more than I did last night," she smiled, taking a deep breath—possibly the first one since the fog rolled in to San Francisco and armed Vulcans started chasing one another. Then, she pushed herself up from the little table and turned to go. Unfortunately, that spoon and napkin got brushed off the table as she went, and both of the customers were impulsively reaching under the table, groping for the fallen items.

"Maybe you _need _a good telepath, just to help you gather your thoughts," the man added, still looking around on the floor.

"I've got too many of them already," Vina laughed.

"Thoughts, or telepaths?"

"Both."

She set the spoon back on the table and, just like that, was leaving the man all by himself in the coffee shop. He plopped the napkin down by her cup, and was right behind her.

"Would it bother you," he said, as she reached the café entrance, and he just after, "if I really could read your mind?"

"No, but it might bother you!"

"Oh, I doubt that," he said, with surprising kindness in his voice.

Embarrassed and suddenly overwhelmed, she hurried out into the glassy corridor, between orbiting modules of the station. And, of course, he followed.

"Well, it doesn't take a telepath to tell you're struggling over leaving—or perhaps with coming back to—Earth," the man said, easily catching up with her, in the long transparent walkway. A non-descript space-barge was passing, on the opposite side from the blinding-white half of the South Pole.

"I'm about to go on a long space voyage," she said, still walking quickly toward the next airlock, which had polite little shrubs and vines growing around it, as if no other satellite, or micro-meteor, would ever dare to come crashing through from the stark reality of the great vacuum outside, into the fanciful tube that protected them now.

"Is that what the telepaths tell you? 'A long voyage?' Sounds more like bad fortune-telling to me," the man said.

"Well, it's true, even if the telepaths don't like it," she added, pausing as another gaggle of old tourists came bouncing through the airlock, past them.

"Why?"

"Why what?" She was walking again, and he was following.

"Why are you going on a long voyage?"

Now she really did stop, at last, to look at him, his soft brown eyes, the pretense of childish amazement, the funny little moustache. But also at his incongruously military build, and the way he kept up with someone easily ten years younger.

"I've been in training for it for over ten years."

"Ah, then since you were just a little girl," he nodded.

"Since I was twenty-one," she corrected him.

"So you made a decision ten years ago, and you're finally getting around to do it now?" He seemed absolutely astonished. And, for better or worse, that astonishment had the curious effect of cooling her down, at last, to mere politeness.

"Look, maybe you should tell me, now, what _you're _doing up here."

"How high is up? This is the closest I've been, down to a planet, in six months!"

Now she started out again, resigned to the fact that he'd follow along, no matter what. Just like T'Mara last night, after the tavern. Why were older men always following her?

"Then you've already been on a long, space-going voyage," she said, not looking back, as he was practically hurrying along at her side, once more.

"Hey, that's pretty good: you must be a fortune teller, yourself."

"Yes, and I predict a long, space-going voyage for you, too—to a penal colony, for bothering younger women."

"Oh-ho! If that they made that into a crime, half the men in the galaxy would never see the light of day again!"

"Here's hoping," she said, without any particular sympathy. They were walking through a hotel lobby now, one moment seeming separate and the next, together. You could see transports and private ships coming and going through the skylights all around, but she barely acknowledged it all to herself, or the fact that they were finally walking more and more slowly, like all the other couples in the great glass enclosure. It made her stop and realize, she hadn't really had a vacation since she was a little girl. And certainly not with a strange man.

"You know what they say, about attractive couples that go to hotels without any baggage," he said sorrowfully, shaking his head.

"I _have_ baggage," she said glumly, mourning her lot in life: no credits, no mission, and prospects that seemed far worse than ordinary. Still, her companion remained cheerful.

"Well, I wouldn't brag about it," he smiled. Then, when she failed to laugh, he added, "Look, I have baggage too!" And with that, he reached into his pocket and produced a little blue waterproof bag, just big enough for a sandwich.

Now she actually stopped, and smiled.

"Why—don't tell me you're actually just hungry?" he said, with deepest sympathy, and offered her the tiny food case at once. "All alone, up here in low orbit, just praying for a bite to eat…"

"I'm not interested. Let's just leave it at that." And she was off again, across the lobby. Was the whole galaxy going to be chasing her for the next fifty years? What if she just wanted to be left alone?

"Oh, well, that's fine. It just happens to be an unusually good sandwich, is all, fresh from Concourse P," he bragged, as if that might easily be the best concourse in the whole space station.

"Look," she said, turning on him, and growing impatient all over again, "I've got one Vulcan who's trying to stop me from going off to do my life's work, because _he_ wants to save the galaxy, or something; and another Vulcan who wants me to go ahead anyway, on the assumption I'll probably go walking right into the jaws of some horrible disaster, because _she_ thinks it's inevitable, and protects some imaginary future she just happens to prefer! And I don't know which side you're going to end up on, or even which side is worse, so would you please just go to Hell, honey?"

"Well, at least you know you're making the decision yourself—I don't see anybody at all around here with pointed ears."

And, it was true, she realized, looking around: just old people, and newlyweds, and bellhops scurrying with stacks and stacks of suitcases, high above the mother planet.

"And, if I may say so," the man added, "it sounds like the only one who can force you into this 'Vulcans' choice,' is you!"

"How do you mean?" She turned back toward the huge Pole now, half dark and half light, and then past the suitcases and potted palms, to a ring of orbiting ships drifting by farther out.

"Well, it sounds like you're absolutely bent on going out there for some kind of academic purpose, at least I guess it must be, after ten years of study. And that desire has to be the cause of all this 'future trouble.' Unless there's something you're not telling me!"

"I think I need to sit down," she said, wiping an imaginary drop of sweat from her brow. Her brain was cramping. It grated on her that everyone else suddenly seemed to understand her so much better than she did, herself. They walked to a big green couch in the middle of the lobby.

"You see, the Buddhists say the cause of all our suffering is simply desire," he said quietly, reasonably, in observance of her sudden fainting expression. "Now, if we can simply eliminate desire," he said, folding his legs into a lotus position on the couch and gesturing as if to throw something far out into space, "why then, why can't we thereby eliminate all suffering?"

"And how are we supposed to eliminate all desire?" She looked up at him sadly. It was the first time she could remember feeling that bad in a long time.

About an hour later, she was getting dressed again, up in his hotel room.

"There, see?" he said, "all desire gone!"

"Is that the way it works for men?" she asked, sitting down to put on her shoes.

"Well, it worked for me… didn't it work for you? Maybe we'd better try it again," he said, with a great show of thoughtfulness; looking around at the ceiling as if he was double-checking some great, elaborate equation up there.

"No, that's all right." She went to a chair by the room portal, and looked out as she pulled-on her blouse again.

"Of course, I'm really not an expert on _all_ men," he shrugged, getting out of the large bed now, himself, "but from what I've heard, it usually works. I suppose one man's pretty much like any other. Accounting for weight and age, I mean."

There was a sudden, loud police-like knock on the hotel room door, and both of them froze as they turned to look, feeling naked still. In fact, the man _was _naked, for a brief moment, before he pulled on his trousers and began closing the adhesive strip on his shirt.

The knocking started up again, like cannon fire. The man with the little moustache and big soldier's body finished dressing and took her by the elbow, and they were out on the balcony looking down at the familiar world below.

"You said you brought a parachute," Vina sighed, let down again, though at least she'd forgotten her suffering.

"Don't worry about that," he said, going through the pockets of his suit very quickly, inside his jacket and out, and then in each pants' pocket, too. They could hear the pounding on the door again, sounding angrier and angrier.

"I hope it's big enough," she said, as he patted his front pockets again.

"I haven't had any complaints yet," he replied, as politely as he could.

"The parachute, I mean," she said, squinting.

"We're not taking a parachute," he said quietly, escorting her to the side of the balcony and, for a moment, it seemed he was just going to push her right off the edge, and through the comfort barrier, out into space. But then the hotel room door burst open and T'Mara, of all people, hurried inside: checking the bed, and the closet, and then the bathroom.

"Here we go," her new boyfriend nodded, and this time he really did push her off the edge.

She was in the hatch of a private ship now, elegant little brass rails at hand level, which was convenient as she'd slipped off the balcony and into the vessel's entryway without ever seeing where she was going. She was admiring the dark polished wood on the inner sides of the airlock, as she pulled herself up from the deck, and noticed the yellow carpeting she'd first tumbled down onto: soft and yellow as canary feathers, as he climbed over her with his long legs.

"Come on, Juliette, your daddy's right behind us!" the man said, and the airlock door slid shut behind him. Then he was around a corner and up to the cockpit, she supposed.

Just as she stood up, and looked out the airlock portal in surprise, she could see T'Mara standing out on the balcony looking straight at her: grim and out of breath as the ship blasted away from the hotel.

"You know," she said, finally catching up with him at the control panel up front, "I feel like I'm the one who broke the time-line now. I thought it was just my professors, but now I'm not so sure."

"Broke the time-line?" he laughed. "You're still you, aren't you?" Their ship followed the busy main line of space-vessel traffic, out toward the great white moon. In some more dramatic moment of history, it could have resembled a great armada, thousands of ships strong, most of them with impulse engines glowing red, as if they were leaving a doomed planet in a moment of great turmoil. But, in reality, it was just the peaceful traffic between Earth and moon, like any other day.

"Yes, but there's something odd about all this that—well, I've been in libraries and observatories and lecture halls for nearly all of the last ten years, so I guess maybe it's just me." She stood uneasily, not sure she'd made the right decision, after all.

"What, you don't think this is normal?" He finally took his eyes off the instruments, which showed they were following the automated guide-path. "If you've got enough credits, you can make your own normal."

"Nice," she sighed, looking around; then getting up and wandering down the central walkway of the ship, as the moon grew large up ahead.

But he was already nudging them out of the interplanetary traffic line when she came back up top again. Those thousands of ships seemed to drift away beneath, and off to starboard, along with the lights of the great research stations along the shadow-line of the moon.

"Wait a minute." Vina had reappeared in the cockpit, with a slightly argumentative look on her face. "You said you only had enough to pay for three drinks for each of us," she began. "And then you say you've got enough credits to make your own reality—which is it, then?"

"Well, that's kind of a personal question, isn't it? But, if you must know, I've had a pretty good run of luck lately, after just pounding away at hard rock for years and years. But I guess I'll always see myself as a man of humble mien." He smiled beatifically, or as if he loved the way words tripped so eagerly upon his tongue.

She nodded, and he turned back to the controls and the moon, as the line of ships ahead seemed to drift away to port.

Then she had to wonder all over again, if this had all really happened by chance, or by some grander design.

Many years later, Jim Kirk was signing reports for a gaggle of yeomen around the captain's chair, when his first officer stepped down to the center of the bridge of the USS _Enterprise_. As if by some pre-arranged signal, all three of the pretty young women wordlessly excused themselves, and climbed up to the lift, to disappear behind the red doors together.

"Good morning, Mr. Spock."

"I may have made an emotional mistake," the half-Vulcan said quietly, after nodding his own greeting, at Kirk's side.

"Oh, really," Kirk said, completely unable to imagine what that might mean.

"Late last night, Dr. Orwell asked for my help, in the matter of preventing her original mission to Talos IV." The Vulcan spoke very quietly, and Kirk had to lean toward him to make out what he was saying, over the usual bridge chatter.

"Oh?" Kirk said, first kindly, and then confused. "But you're too young to go all the way back to… stop her," he added, quietly, also remembering the stern opposition of the elderly T'Lan to the whole notion.

"Indeed," the Vulcan nodded, leaning in close to speak even more quietly, as the overnight crew finished their final hour's work. "However, I remembered I had visited Earth with my mother at the age of five, and last night attempted to conduct a message back to her, through my childhood self. And then through another Vulcan intermediary."

"Back to your mother?"

"Back to Dr. Orwell, before her unfortunate mission," Spock clarified, calmly.

"Good thinking, Mr. Spock," Kirk said, hoping it really was… good thinking. But something in the science officer's demeanor suggested otherwise.

16

16

_By Richard T. Green_


	3. Chapters 6, Unknown, and 7

_Vina Escaped II: Green Blood, Red Blood_

**Chapter Six **

"Whoa, whoa, stay back, Jim," was all Dr. McCoy would say, pushing the captain out into the corridor at Sickbay. Strangely, it had been McCoy himself who called Kirk down, only moments before. And now he was holding him back at the automatic door.

"What is it?"

"It should be safe for me, Doctor," Spock said, brushing past the chief medical officer, even as two medics carried out a leggy redheaded nurse, who seemed to have passed-out on duty.

"Just hold-on a minute, Mr. Spock!" McCoy wheeled around and the door slid shut in the captain's face, with the Vulcan and the doctor on the other side. Kirk made a glum-looking face and turned to watch the orderlies carry that nurse down the expansive gangway, like a department store mannequin: around the bend, and out of sight. Probably down to the mini-clinic, far below, between engineering and the shuttle bay. That was just about as far away as you could get on this ship, and not be dangling from a tether.

"Here," McCoy said, when the sickbay door re-opened again. He immediately jabbed a hypo into the captain's arm, and some unidentified blue liquid burbled down from the cap, spraying into his bloodstream.

"What was that," Kirk said, rubbing the injection site, and following the doctor in after that very strange welcome.

"Anti-psychotic," McCoy grumbled, as they walked through the office, to the door of the wardroom, where the beds and scanner boards were. There, the doctor held out an arm to prevent the captain from just naturally marching right in like he owned the place.

A kind of whirlpool raged around before them, where the middle beds should have been. And as he looked back and forth, left to right, Jim Kirk realized that neither the keeper of Talos IV, nor his long-time captive, Vina, lay where they were supposed to be. Even the medical scanners overhead were blurred into non-existence, as some shimmering oval, like the black rubber belt of a great assembly-line wobbled round and round furiously in the air, taking up most of the room with a strange 'glowing' darkness inside.

And there was Spock, on the right edge of it, where Vina should have been. He reached his hand into the blurring vortex, a great oblong hole in the air, both black and blinding all at once, with strange flares inside.

"He says it's not really there," McCoy confided, seeming faintly amused, as they watched the Vulcan reaching into the maelstrom. If it was an illusion, Spock was still putting his hand in with a great deal of caution and respect.

"What is it," Kirk said quietly, already imagining the worst, but strangely detached as the drug inside him was going to work. Everything seemed to have a very literal quality to it now, and he almost imagined he could see through the swirling flattened oval, that it was becoming somewhat transparent—or, perhaps he'd stopped imagining, and the vision that he was seeing was actually becoming less real, with his arm-full of whatever was in that shot. He and the doctor watched in silence, as more of the medical staff gathered behind them.

"Are they all right?" Kirk wondered, his eyes naturally trying to follow the rotation, imagining Vina and the keeper having been swallowed up already.

"If they're even still there," McCoy nodded, his eyes flickering back and forth from one bed to the other, where the keeper and the kept should have been.

"Any danger to the ship?" Kirk asked.

"Well, I've got one nurse down, who just happened to walk in a few minutes ago when it started, I guess. That's when I called you. I still don't know what to make of it."

"Is it… really there?" It was such a violent looking whirlpool, he felt like he had to shout to be heard, though it was eerily silent, spinning across the beds beneath it.

"Instruments say 'no,' Captain," the surgeon shrugged, as if there was really no hope at all for any sort of mechanical contrivance.

Kirk nodded, thinking nothing really awful could happen, as long as the _Enterprise _remained intact. Then he realized his science officer was in there, standing on the edge of the mad swirl.

"Spock?"

The Vulcan had crept closer to where Vina's bed was still barely visible. And his hand and arm were gradually blurring away, like sand in the wind, as he reached into the vortex. He did not seem alarmed, though.

"It's like," Kirk said, more quietly now, "some kind of a… circuit… between Vina and the keeper. Where they _should _be, I mean."

"Agreed," Spock said aloud, having overheard, with his back to the other two officers.

"Shouldn't you be approaching it from the keeper's side," Kirk said, growing worried, "…to avoid interfering with any good Vina might be trying to do?"

Spock withdrew his arm, tentatively, and it almost seemed by magic that his hand was all back in its usual structure of bones and flesh and color and density, right down to the fingertips. He crossed around past the great maw of energy to the far left edge, where the keeper must still be lying on his own palette.

"If we seal off the room," Kirk said quietly, turning to McCoy, "we could knock them both out."

The doctor nodded, transfixed by the Vulcan's hovering over the left edge.

"So far, they don't seem to be doing any harm," McCoy muttered.

"That we know of," Kirk said.

Now Spock stepped back from the keeper's side, and slowly rejoined the other two.

"They may, indeed, be locked in some sort of telepathic combat," the Vulcan said, surprised by his own conclusion.

"Because of her hatred?" Kirk squinted into the darkness again, looking for Vina.

"As I informed the captain," Spock said, for McCoy's benefit, "last night, I encountered Dr. Orwell in the corridor, and she explained her difficulty with her old professor, T'Lan." Spock spoke quietly, as if Vina or the keeper might overhear, though neither was visible behind him.

"And you completed the time link," Kirk said.

"Evidently. And now," Spock resumed, even more quietly, "it is my initial conclusion that she has, somehow, already gone to work to change her past—it may also be that the Talosian keeper is striving to stop her, though perhaps not in the same linear history."

"Linear history?" McCoy demanded, skeptically.

"What we seem to be witnessing is the combined effect of two temporal disturbances: the confluence of two 'shadow reflections' essentially in conflict."

"So it isn't really there," Kirk sighed.

"No more so than we, ourselves, from their points of view," Spock nodded. "They have so distressed the fabric of time, as we do with space, at warp speed, that our own existence is equally a part of another 'temporal distress' to them. Though we cannot sense our own uncertainties, at present energy levels."

"You mean," McCoy shook his head in confusion, "from their point of view, each of them is solid and real on their bed, and we're part of some swirling vortex of all our own possible potentialities, involving the each of them in there?"

"A reasonable summary of the present situation," Spock said, as if he were pleased by the chief medical officer's perspicacity. "Dr. Orwell would see three vortices, each one connecting each of us to the keeper, and likewise, the keeper would see three vortices, representing each of us, tied independently to Dr. Orwell."

"That may sound reasonable to _you_, Mr. Spock," McCoy said, rubbing his temple as he turned to go back to his desk, and out of sight of the blinding whirlpool.

"And," Kirk pressed on, quietly, in the doorway, "they aren't really interacting at all, then."

"Negative. At least not in this present moment," Spock said, earnestly.

"Whenever this… present moment is," Kirk said, not at all amused by the threat of temporal disturbance.

"I recommend," Spock concluded, "we send a report to Starfleet, in the event that the timeline should shift unexpectedly."

"See to it, please, Mr. Spock," Kirk said. Then he stepped away, toward McCoy, who had taken his seat at his little office desk nearby. "They no longer occupy the same reality," Kirk sighed. "And now, we can't share their own realities either. As if they were… insane?"

"Jim," McCoy whispered, from his desk, "what's to stop either of them from changing the past, beyond our ability to continue on like this?"

The science officer walked over to an auxiliary computer terminal, and linked it to the science station on the bridge. Kirk could that Spock was packaging sickbay records for subspace transmission back to Starfleet. And when the captain looked back over his shoulder the other way, the swirling darkness in the wardroom seemed to resemble a random display of electronic rages, on some antique flat-screen, or "television" monitor framed in the hard edges of the doorway.

"Changing their pasts, possibly changing our pasts," Kirk said, almost too quietly for Dr. McCoy to hear, across the little desk.

"I don't know about Vina," McCoy grumbled, "but I know that Talosian isn't going to waste a lot of time operating on our behalf."

"Can't you just put it back to sleep?"

"Jim, I don't even know how it got out of those brainwave dampeners in the first place. Unless it was never fully under, and just waiting for its chance, or…"

"Or what?"

"Or, unless she somehow released it, herself."

"That's crazy."

The doctor only looked back, very soberly, as if he were far from mad, himself.

"Why would she?" Kirk squinted over McCoy's shoulder, in disbelief.

"I don't know—why would it wait till now to act, if it wasn't really under restraint?"

Kirk shook his head, for it was unimaginable to him that Vina would cooperate with her long-time captor in any way, willingly. Maybe it had been injured more severely than they thought, when Uhura brought it down with a flying tackle on the bridge. Then there was still a much larger question that overrode everything else, anyway—what to do, to stop the keeper from reaching back into the past, somehow, to prevent Vina from saving herself, and the Federation?

And it was all the result of a seemingly innocent insight she'd had a few days before, as they left for Vulcan, to use a sort of 'internal telepathy' to prevent her own crash landing. Now he understood the coldness, the seeming cruelty, of the elderly T'Lan, in refusing her. And, likewise, he felt he understood what the Vulcans were really afraid of. It even seemed possible, for a moment, they'd never get rid of this horrific hole in time, on board their own ship.

He marched into the wardroom, with McCoy close behind.

"Jim, you can't just kill it, lying there like that!"

"It's not so helpless, Doctor," Kirk said, glancing around for anything that might serve as a weapon. The raging black oval seemed like a dark mirror, reflecting him and his two friends, and many things that didn't really seem to be there at all, as they stood before this telepathic hole in time. Spock came up behind him, reaching both arms into the swirling non-existence, where the keeper's head should be. Then his head, and whole torso followed, wavering and disappearing into the whirlpool: like new legends handed backwards to the generations of the past.

"Spock," Kirk said aloud, in a way that made the name a question, and a command, all at once. Finally the Vulcan's head drew back from the fiery blackness, and he seemed to blink and start, at withdrawing too quickly from the madness of dreams.

"They are, indeed, jumping back and forth across the epochs, Captain," Spock said, the vortex still seeming to roar in his ears, as he spoke too loud for the quiet room.

All at once, this conjured up an image in Kirk's own mind, of the little keeper, hopping up along the edge of some great crashing spaceship, or Vina wresting control of another metallic leviathan, to change its course, even as it burned downward into the Talosian atmosphere, carrying more victims for the gluttonous minds below.

In the same intuitive flash, or maybe just from standing too close now, he also peered into the roaring black and seemed to gain a glimpse of a keeper pushing forward a dazed-looking nurse in a hospital, with a pillow in her hands to smother some child that would grow up to challenge its race, or perhaps become an ancestor of Vina herself, and challenge them at any moment in the near future, coming (seemingly) out of nowhere.

There were more impossible images that flashed and tangled, too close or too far away, too great to be captured in a tiny periscope viewer, like long sea-creatures revealed in twisting segments: Vina seeming to change the past in one way, and the keeper riding up on her heels each time, to undo any damage she'd done to the time-line that brought them to this point.

Spock was hunched halfway into the black mirror, as it swirled so fast; and Kirk imagined his first officer's head was down, hovering over the keeper's throbbing skull, where it must be on its pillow. He edged closer, to get a look down into the heart of the empty, flashing vortex.

"Just stay back, Jim," McCoy said, over his shoulder. The doctor pulled him away, holding Kirk by the upper arm. His hair wasn't literally standing on end, but he became aware of a strange charge all across his flesh, like a nameless terror, or from a falling sensation, which seemed to depart as soon as he gained some distance from the whirlpool.

"We've got to stop them both," Kirk said, tugging down on his shirtwaist.

"If Spock needs your help, he'll let you know," McCoy barked, angrily reflected in the impossible spinning smear. He hurried to his computer screen, trying to find readings for Vina or the keeper through the remote links, bypassing the screens over the beds, which had been more or less disappeared.

Finally well beyond the hiding of his own impatience, Kirk stood before the dark illusion, staring straight into it.

"Have you got a tricorder, or something?"

In a moment, Nurse Chapel appeared with the hand-held scanning device. He pointed it into the swirls and flares within.

"Nothing?" McCoy asked, barely glancing up.

"I don't know," Kirk said, lowering the tricorder to his side. Its black shoulder strap dangled to the floor like a toy whip, equally as useless.

Then, as if by magic, the anomaly vanished. Not with any "pop!" in the air, but perhaps a "pop!" in the light, as the darkness was unaccountably swept away. And Jim Kirk could see Mr. Spock bent over there, making the last adjustments to the two brainwave dampeners: one poised on each side of the keeper's head, like the two ends of a delicate little bridge. Finally, the first officer stood up and turned around.

"Report."

"Before we departed Rigel for Vulcan, nearly four days ago, we attempted to create a state of dream-guidance in this being—while also maintaining a state of something approximating physical hibernation." The science officer gestured back again to the Talosian. "It now appears we were not entirely successful in finding the proper balance."

"Well, that's the understatement of the day," McCoy said, finally able to look up at the screens over each patient's head.

"And, you were correct?" the captain asked. "They were both trying to reach back to their younger selves, to change their pasts?"

"Evidently," Spock said, "though any changes in the present may be impossible to detect."

"Good work," Kirk nodded, turning to look at Vina, now. She seemed to be sleeping, but not in a restful way—more like the sleep of a patient after a long, stressful operation. She was her "old" self again, and every bone within her strained against her worn flesh.

"Maybe," Kirk said, as Spock stood by his side now, "whatever changes they sought… have yet to be completed in the past."

"If it's in the past," McCoy shook his head, "by definition, it's already completed."

"Not necessarily, Doctor," Spock argued, politely. "Past, present and future may exist simultaneously, in parallel. If time is truly a dimension, we may simply be in an adjacent room to yesterday. Likewise, a thousand years from now may only be through another doorway."

"Then what you're saying, Mr. Spock," McCoy said, suddenly rising to debate, "is that each person in each room is _attached_ to _all_ the other people in _all_ the other rooms, by some kind of magical life-line! And when _one_ room is changed, then _all_ the other rooms are, too!"

"We don't know this for a certainty, Doctor," the science officer said, tilting his head and looking at the surgeon, as if he were merely a picture on a wall that hadn't yet be hung exactly right.

"However," Spock resumed, "it would appear that the very existence of 'shadow reflections' may verify that any single strand between the past and present, or present and future, must exist, within any one individual's—or, more specifically, any one telepath's—own consciousness. That string of decisions, the lineage from one present to the next, over time, could in fact constitute a variation on what you call the soul."

There was a pause in the conversation, which seemed perfectly normal to Spock, but involved some careful planning on the part of his captain. Finally, Kirk spoke.

"Why do you think the Vulcans never explored this, scientifically?"

"I can only imagine they found the subject… distasteful. And, potentially, dangerous." There was another pause, as they silently considered what to do with the keeper before them: seemingly under control again.

"'Distasteful, and… dangerous. Right on both counts, Mr. Spock," Kirk sighed, with a new sense of wariness. Finally, he turned and walked out into the sickbay office, and out into the corridor to the turbolift. Something about heading up to the bridge of the _Enterprise _seemed strangely reassuring at the moment. Maybe those three pretty yeomen were back up there, just waiting for him to return to the center seat.

**Chapter Unknown**

Something prompted the middle-aged Vina Orwell to leave her diggings on an unexplored planet, and to make the long space flight back into the heart of the Federation of Planets, on Rigel III. And after being alone so long it was, quite simply, overwhelming at first.

She had long-since forgotten about Professor T'Mara's description of a deeply personal voice, coming into one's head in the midst of private meditation. But in her version of meditation, the endless digging for signs of long-dead civilizations, she was similarly swept up in a moment, by the sense that she needed to take care of some strange, urgent business.

She'd been digging for about 52 years now, and translating ancient tongues, and re-living ancient lives, and publishing to some reasonable degree of success. But after all that time alone, she actually cringed as she first set foot on humanity's "second home world."

She couldn't imagine how anyone could have any single thought that persisted in the brain for more than six seconds, as she walked out of the busy space-port, and into another spectacularly wealthy Federation capitol: even busier than how she remembered Earth itself, over five decades earlier.

Her trusty old ship was up in space-dock, and she didn't really plan on spending any more than a few hours on this strange compulsion, to prevent some horrific accident at the local Starbase, involving someone named Christopher Pike. And so far, it hadn't occurred to her at all that she was having the same sort of forced premonition as T'Mara, or T'Lan.

"Excuse me," she said, stopping by a group of cadets waiting for the next shuttle off-world, "can you tell me where they test students on warp engineering around here? I studied it when I was your age, back at the Academy, and…"

"Yes ma'am," one of the kids said with a deep nod and exaggerated sense of decorum—a kind of courtesy that seemed slightly appalling to her, since she was never around young people anymore, and secretly thought of herself as young, even now. "You take that concourse over there, down to the orange trams, and—"

"Oh, let's just take her ourselves," one of the other cadets protested, as the explanation might prove longer than the trip itself.

She was surrounded by a gaggle of energetic post-grads, weaving their way across the terminal, and down a long tunnel-like path that was strangely reassuring, with its plum-colored walls and gentle lighting. Gradually, they saw fewer and fewer people going back and forth in the concourse, and the sky-trains that waited outside the gates seemed smaller and smaller, for shorter trips around Rigel III.

She did feel a deep pang of sentimentality, being jammed together with all these kids in their 20's, who could simply not stop talking, and each one seemed to be having a separate conversation with each of the others, and perhaps even a running monolog with themselves, making for about thirty or more discussions or series of rejoinders all at once. Suddenly she realized, her mind was reeling at the mere prospect of trying to keep up with it all, as she'd practically been living in solitary confinement for all these years.

"They say they're getting up to warp fourteen, in test conditions!" one of the young ensigns enthused.

"That's where I came in, over there, Gate 113-B, the first time I was here," another piped-up.

And so on, but mostly indistinguishable to her ear for desolation, as voices piled one on top of the other, as gifted young people spoke one over the other.

Then, she realized she hadn't seen a single Vulcan in the entire space-port since she'd arrived. It was a stunning thought—fifty years ago, on Earth, they were as common as could be. Like security guards, or stern parents, managing the portals of the Universe.

And then, with a flush of pride, she realized that humanity may have been ushered out into space by the Vulcans, but that men had somehow managed to go outward on their own. What a great thought, and what a strange secret the rest of the galaxy had been keeping from her, since she escaped her beloved Professor T'Mara: that men had been adopted by the Vulcans, as wayward children, but had grown up since.

"That's the train to Maundi," one of the cadets said, as they finally turned a corner in the long concourse, to where she could see a new set of long, compartmentalized transports beyond the windows. But it sounded like, "the train to Monday," which seemed a bit ominous, as she looked out at the segmented re-entry vessel, and up to the moon above. Just a second ago, it seemed like only Friday night.

Maundi was the research station over Rigel III in those days, for the development of newer warp engines. And Vina was instantly intrigued by the possibility of seeing what she'd missed in the last five decades of tinkering and inspiration, since the earliest days of man's own discovery of warp drive, and the Vulcan alliance.

She thanked them all, and recited her Academy ID number to the computer terminal at the gate. It still worked all these years later, and put her on the next launch. She hadn't really had an official contact with Starfleet since seven years ago, when she tried to present her findings on dead civilizations of the Delta-Vega region. But it had ended in disappointment, though, as nobody seemed interested in her particular variety of dust and broken crockery.

Two hours later, she was strapped in and the sky-train was descending toward the moon base.

"She says she has an urgent message for you, Captain," one of the lieutenants said, barely glancing up at Vina as Christopher Pike stepped out of a meeting room, after a dozen others had already filed out. She had looked him up on her flight back into the heart of the Federation, but she was still surprised at the sheer presence of the man, when he finally appeared before her.

Outside the thick windows, the black moonscape stretched to the edge of the stars, and white craters scarred the space between, like primitive maps of the galaxy, beneath the galaxy itself. Off to the north, a blast pad sheltered the laboratories below the surface, against meteors, and prying eyes.

"What can I do for you, Doctor Orwell?" His eyes were like twin solar eclipses, some brilliant pair of suns hidden behind sharp, attentive pupils. He smiled, unaccountably—or, perhaps, because she was gazing back so strangely.

"Admiral Kamal in five minutes," a very serious, dark-haired beauty behind him said, almost inaudibly, as Pike waited for Vina to speak, and vice-versa.

"Oh, it's—I just got in from a long flight, you'll have to excuse me," Vina said, also nodding at the tall brunette, trying not to curtsy, though some sort of royal reception seemed in order, somehow. All these people around him—the lieutenant, the strange, no-nonsense assistant trailing in his wake… And all the people he'd just been with at some conference, apparently.

"Well, then," Chris Pike said, as if throwing ceremony out the blast-proof window all at once, "we should get you a drink, or some lunch, or…"

"Well, you may not want to go to all that trouble," she said, knowing she was about to make a ridiculous claim on his time and position.

"Nonsense. Number One, if you'll excuse us."

"Of course, Captain," the brunette said, with a tired sort of nod. She took a pouch filled with his notepad and a clutch of memory plaques, and watched as the captain led the strange blond woman up the concourse passage. Frankly, she didn't know which one to be more worried about.

"So you've come all this way to tell me I'm in great danger," he smiled, irresistibly.

"I can't explain it, I was just out there, as usual, covered in moon-dust, and this overwhelming—it was like being shouted at, from inside my own head. And that's not something that happens to me all the time, Captain," she added, with her own, more wary smile.

"And that's it?"

"It went by so fast—there may have been more, but I'd be embellishing, probably. It was all like a terrible flash, like—light—and force, pushing me back, all at once. I was… startled."

"It sounds like it," Pike nodded, looking away—not wanting to stare into her impossibly mysterious eyes, not to smile at the way her whole face smiled when she spoke. Not to have to feel like he'd run out of breath, just looking at her. He leaned back, as if he felt the explosive force that she was hinting at, herself.

"You know, every scientist on this base is in great danger, most of the time," he said, as if to sooth her fears.

"Yes, of course," Vina looked down. But when she turned her eyes up to his again, across the little table in the space-port bar, hers even more intense than his.

"I don't do this sort of thing, as a rule," she said, as plainly and directly as she could, appealing to common sense beyond the outrageous mystical nonsense that seemed to pervade the entire conversation.

"I understand, Doctor," Pike said, looking grim or annoyed or…

"But you have some sort of problem on your hands, some sort of… experiment—something you know pushes the boundaries, or forces a kind of dramatic attempt to bridge the gap between theory and a new reality. Like a thousand, or a million men of daring before you."

"Or, like a billion," Pike said, not wanting to admit the danger that seemed to darken his expression a moment ago.

"Look," she said, trying again. "I know this is a warp-drive test program, I guess everyone knows it. I studied in the earliest days of it on Earth, a long time ago—probably not long after you graduated yourself. And I haven't kept up at all, so I can't pretend to know what's current anymore."

"Spend enough time up here," Pike mused, "and you won't know if you're in the near future, or the far future, after enough time's passed."

"My specialty is the other direction, I'm afraid," Vina winked.

"All your answers are in the past, Doctor Orwell, and all mine are out there in the future."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that, Captain," she said, suddenly looking very serious.

"Okay," Pike said, his charm only a formality now. "I can see you've been out on a long, space-going voyage—"

"I'm not some phony fortune-teller," she snarled.

There was an icy silence, in which each of them seemed to be mourning the death of something that had never really been born, in this particular Universe, in this particular time-line. It may have existed in a billion other realities, just a subatomic particle away, or less, in a billion different ways. And, here in this one single Universe gone-wrong, this one time-line that had somehow splintered off, just the act of turning away from each other caused them both a quiet, yearning pain.

"Isn't there anything I can say to make you reconsider… whatever it is you're about to embark upon?" When she stopped speaking, it seemed as though the entire spaceport around them had gone deathly silent, and he looked at her, angry at himself for trying to dismiss her heart-felt words so easily. It was as if every other thing around them, on Maunti, and around Rigel, and even beyond the farthest ships of the Federation, all desperately wanted to be back in line with the prevailing will of all that was.

"You'll have to excuse me," he said, after an awkward moment. He looked at her as if she'd seen too deeply into him, before breaking into a charming smile. "I have an admiral to try to persuade."

"Of course," she nodded, looking down at the table top. A waitress had hovered nearby for a few minutes, as if they might be there for food or drink, but eventually disappeared.

"Although," Chris Pike shook his head, "it'll just be me, telling the admiral that he's far too powerful and ethical and high and mighty to let me do anything brash and reckless with his students and laboratories up here." His eyes gazed along the top of the wall behind her, as if he were simply looking across a collection of whimsical ceramics up on a high shelf, in familiar poses and designs. "And then," he sighed, still smiling, "Admiral Kamal will tell _me _that I'm too brave and forward-thinking and finally realize that's just exactly why we all came out here in the first place."

"You make it all sound like a game," she smiled, in spite of the fact that she was about to watch him walk away for the first and last time in her life.

"Reinforcing the self-assurance of admirals, and the respectability of power and scientific ambition, Miss Orwell? Just a game?" His smile made her whole body feel lighter. Then, all at once, she felt weighted down again by the strange vision that called her here, out of decades of seclusion.

"What if that simple routine between the two of you," she said, looking far too sad all at once, "is what leads to something… _wrong_?"

He looked at her, then away.

"I'm serious, Captain, I don't just fly around the galaxy trying to knock brave knights off their high horse."

He looked back, as if surprised that anyone would think of him that way—or, implicitly, that he might think of her that way.

"I'm sorry—it's just that I feel like I know you, somehow," he said, his crystal-blue eyes staring into hers, challenging her to explain how.

"Oh my god—" Vina stood up suddenly. She had finally remembered Professor T'Mara, and that night in the fog, in San Francisco.

"What is it?" He was standing too, looking around as if great monsters were about to burst out of the restaurant kitchen.

"Oh my god!" she said, again.

"I think you'd better sit down," Pike said, trying to fold his arm gently over her shoulders, and steer her down to the table again.

"No, it's not that—it's just—back at the academy, when I was young, the exact same thing happened with one of my professors, who tried to stop me, too."

She sat down at last, and the waitress returned. Vina was wiping her cheeks as though she'd suddenly begun crying. And she was mortified at looking so crazy, in front of this amazing man.

"We'd like some water please, and maybe a brandy," the captain said, very seriously.

"Okay," Vina sighed, too embarrassed to look at him for a minute. "Can we just forget that happened, please?"

"Of course," he said, but he reached across the table and took her wrists in his strong hands, until she finally met his steely gaze.

"I'm not crazy," she breathed, trying to slow down her inhaling and exhaling.

"I know that," he said.

She looked at him harder now, wondering how any man in his right mind could think she was anywhere near her own. She didn't know exactly what she'd expected, when she got that "calling" back in the archeological digs, but it didn't seem anything like this.

"That thing you and the admiral were going to talk about," she said, gently pulling her hands back, till only her fingertips were left on her edge of the table, like soldiers peering over a trench. "It's none of my business, but it must be something new in warp drive. And that's what that awful premonition must have been all about."

"You know I can't talk about that," he said.

"I—when I was at the Academy," she said quietly, as the drinks arrived, "one of my professors, a Vulcan, tried to stop me from leaving the planet, to prevent something terrible from happening."

"Interesting," Pike said, trying to imagine a Vulcan doing something that sounded so emotionally charged.

"And another Vulcan tried to stop him, because she'd had a premonition of her own—or something—he was going to try to change the past. The future, I guess you'd say, back then."

"And what happened?"

"Well, nothing," she admitted, rolling her eyes at the awkwardness of it all. "But can you imagine a Vulcan pulling a stunt like that—or two Vulcans—for no good reason?"

"I'm not in the imagining business."

"Neither am I," she said, taking a sip of the brandy.

"And neither are the Vulcans," Pike said, his eyes looking past her, at the people coming and going out in the concourse beyond the entrance to the diner.

"I can't stop you from going through with whatever research you're in the middle of," she said, intently. "But if you could just plan-in some extra precaution…"

"Human ships need human pilots, Miss Orwell," he said, with a pilot's own implacable self-assurance.

She shook her head in frustration, at not having the persuasive powers of a Vulcan.

"Look," he said, at last, "if I could possibly find a way to get you a security clearance, would it help ease your mind? If I brought you along? Help stop that… premonition of yours? Who knows, we might neither of us come back alive, but at least it wouldn't be on your conscience any more, if that's any consolation."

It was more than she expected, but still not exactly what she had in mind for either of them. At least it gave her more time, and anything that did happen to him would be visited upon her, as well—a punishment she supposed she'd deserve, if she couldn't stop him, in the end.

Somehow, the tall brunette woman was quite noticeable merely for her absence, the next morning. Even Captain Pike seemed like a vine reaching out for a trellis, every minute or so, as he stood in the hanger, with its wide doors and view of the moon's horizon beyond the portals.

He turned and saw Vina approaching, through a side door that was obviously not the one he'd intended—and she looked as though she'd been struggling to find even that one minor entryway for some time. Her eyes were still wide and darting all around, as if she'd been in one long corridor after another, before accidentally opening this one right door, at last. She hurried across the shiny deck toward him, still brandishing her temporary credentials in one hand.

"Am I late?"

"Not at all," he said, and they walked across the hanger to a tremendous pair of warp engines out near the wide doors. They would have broken a starship in half, if they ever cranked them up to even half-power, she supposed.

"I'd like to see the ship they put those on," she said, still appalled at the gargantuan pair of cylinders.

"That _is_ the ship, Miss Orwell," Pike smiled, looking at her as if she'd had a momentary lapse in common sense. She returned the look, without quite managing his charming smile.

"What, and we just strap ourselves on, one to each barrel?"

"No," he laughed, "there's a cockpit built into the pylon belt there, see?"

She actually did not see. Of course, you didn't have to have much room, nor any view, to actually be in there—only a death wish or a mad desire to get away or fly back through time, or…

"Good thing I didn't eat this morning," she said, as they finally climbed up into the hatch, where the two engines were joined together in a brutish, flying-wing sort of structure—the two pylons of some unimaginably huge starship, without the starship. Her voice echoed in the hanger in that final moment, far from the mechanics in their corral, two hundred meters away.

There was actually room for empty seats for a dozen people behind them in the little control room, where the horrific test engines above were more of an invisible presence now.

"Where's everyone else?" she asked, belting-in.

He looked at her, and then back at the instruments, in silence.

"They're coming along tomorrow," he nodded, at last, as she was obviously still waiting for an answer.

"They'll never catch us in this thing," she said quietly, as he engaged the start-up sequence. The moon trembled beneath her seat, and she knew the warp drive was stirring, even though she couldn't hear the sub-sonic end of the familiar musical scale for another few seconds.

Then, almost against her will, the hanger doors slid apart, revealing the craters of Maunti, and the night-side of Rigel III beyond. White lights dotted the great world like the impact of man himself upon the deep, where civilization had gone smashing into the coastlines and waterways of that most sublimely Earth-like of all the worlds out here.

"Could you hit that confirmation light, right there, Miss Orwell?"

"Please call me Vina," she said, after tapping the co-pilot's alert.

"Please call me Chris," he echoed smoothly, as the din of the great engines made any other conversation nearly impossible.

"You know," she shouted to be heard, as they slid forward, out into the vacuum above the moon's surface, "I'm really not rated on anything like this."

"Neither am I!" He laughed that inconsequential laugh, and she glanced back at all the empty seats behind them. She couldn't help thinking of all the lives she'd saved, even if it meant sacrificing them both right now.

"Look," she shouted, trying to sound calm in spite of the desperation of trying to be heard over the engines' roar, "how much testing has this thing had so far?"

"Oh, months and months, in the simulator," he nodded, as the moon shrank abruptly below them, and they turned away to leave the system.

"But, I mean, how many hours—"

"This is the first time out of the hanger, couldn't you tell? There aren't any claw marks on the helm yet!"

At that, she took her hands off the co-pilot's controls, and clenched them together in her lap with the horrible feeling that this all had happened several times before, somehow. Either that, or she was finally seeing the finer grain of her strange vision, in all its miserable detail.

The magnetic fields that kept the anti-matter in place had become strangely visible through the bulkheads on either side of them: as if the sheer power of the engines defied common shielding, and was making human presence impossible, or at least antithetical to humanity's own great ambition and design. Strange, twisting lightning crackled on either side of them as Pike got the outrageous pair of projectiles aligned on the test flight program. They were far outside the system already, just that fast.

"Going out to safer distance," he said—or shouted—she'd got so used to shouting, it almost seemed like polite conversation now.

"I'm glad I didn't have any breakfast," she shouted.

"You'll be back in plenty of time for last night's midnight snack," he laughed, at his own nostalgic, Relativistic joke.

"I didn't have that, either!"

"You can't just live on hope, Vina," he said, finally using her first name.

"Oh, you'd be surprised."

The seats behind them both folded out into great pads, as if some horrific crash were inevitable now. Shoulder and head cradles scooped around them, as if their fates were sealed. As if a few inches of firm padding would make any difference, at light-speed to the fourteenth or fifteenth power of light-speed. She put it down to an engineer's sense of humor, or some psychologist's idea that anyone could ever feel safer this way.

"Does anyone really need to go this fast?" She was practically screaming now, over the unbearable roar of those outrageous engines, and the stars were like a vicious sleet on the instrument panel. Her head felt icy cold, and there seemed to be a large stone in her belly.

"What'll we do when we use up this galaxy?" he smiled, maddeningly.

It went on like this for what would have been a whole lifetime, a whole lifetime ago—before warp-space and before space-matrix restoration coils and all of that had changed the map of the galaxy, yet again. They crossed gulfs men would have wasted their whole lives passing, just a hundred and fifty short years ago, in the span of minutes.

But at this speed, it was all a blur, and too much to enjoy all at once. Like watching the entire Universe be born, and age, and die, in an hour.

And, after she'd given up hope of enduring the perpetual thunder any longer, and (what had become) the dreamy lightning of the stars at their fingertips, he finally brought them to a peaceful stop, a long way from home. The lightning twisting in the walls gradually melted back into the bulkheads, as the magnetic bottles returned to normal size, just beyond the capsule.

He began pressing buttons in a pattern she didn't recognize, and then repeated the action, his face going handsomely blank and befuddled. Finally, his eyes went back and forth, when his fingers couldn't seem to make the ship do right.

"Huh," he said, looking up at last. "Looks like we're out of gas."

"Gosh," she heaved a sigh of relief, now that her stomach was back inside her body again. "And me in my sister's best fascinator."

"We could have gone even faster," he said, not quite listening, but tilting his head, as if to brag. "If it was all just cadets, like I'd planned…"

"You'd have given them the ride of a life-time." And somehow, in saying so, she realized she'd done what she came all this way to do.

"But, you know, you've got your whole life ahead of you, and all." Why did it seem like he couldn't take his eyes off of her? She was perplexed and flattered, all at once.

They looked into the instruments (for there were no beautiful windows, of course), and silently marveled at how far they'd gone. Then, as if the meaning had become overwhelming and even burdensome, Captain Pike spoke at last.

"Just points on a map, I suppose."

"What about that woman you left behind today?" she said, referring to his brunette _aide de camp_, Number One.

"I think she's given up on me, she put in for transfer a month ago."

_I wouldn't be too sure about that_, Vina thought to herself, not even having to glance at that granite profile to know why a woman would never stray too far from him.

"Of course," he said, with a perfectly straight face, "we could just keep going like this—be listed as a 'lost ship.'"

She nodded, and the silence was strangely like music to her ears, after the ordeal of impossible distances being shredded like anti-matter.

"So this is your last hurrah?" she said, managing a smile, as if he were some terrible ruin, about to be left behind, alone and forgotten. "Your assistant is moving on, and you're just test piloting, now? Looking to go out with a bang?"

"I hope not," he smiled. "I've always thought the hurrah's would just go deeper and deeper inside. Look around, and one of these days, you'll find me back there on Rigel, on a mountaintop… in here, at least," he added, tapping his chest. Clearly, he still had a few loose ends to tie up, but she nodded anyway. "Or just on some damn farm, I guess. Look me up, if you're not too busy with fossils of your own, that is."

"Maybe I will."

**Chapter Seven **

The next morning, after the strange business with the black oval, Kirk met Vina in the transporter room, for their next sessions of interrogations and study down on Vulcan. She stood rather quickly from the motorized wheelchair, as if it reminded her too much of the final days of Chris Pike. Then, she seemed to take Kirk's offered hand, only out of her own sense of courtesy, when they stepped up onto the beaming chamber together.

"It'll be nice to have another little rest down there," she said ironically, as they waited for the usual dematerialization to take place. And waited.

"What is it, Scotty," Kirk asked, as the chief engineer went through the same sequence of button pushing at the console, across the room, a second time.

"If I didna know any better Captain," Scotty shook his head, "I'd say they've blocked the signal."

Kirk, true to form, was off the raised platform right away, and walking to the console himself. He pressed the little button on the panel's comm-link.

"_Enterprise _to Vulcan port authority, two to beam down," he said, in a very routine way, though he was hunched over the top of the control panel, his brow furrowed a bit. Behind him, Vina seemed to look down at her white boots, as if a sense of defeat had come out of nowhere to overwhelm her.

"Permission denied, at this time," the flat, Vulcan voice on the other end, replied.

Kirk closed the communication by tapping the little oval button again. He looked at Scotty, and Scotty looked at him, in that "who can ever figure out a Vulcan" sort of way, before the captain squared his shoulders, and walked back to Vina.

"Well, I guess they're done with us," he said, trying to smile.

She nodded, climbing back down to the deck, and into the wheelchair, where she seemed to surrender to its pads and monitors. Lights on the sides came to life, showing her heartbeat and pulse, and smaller 'telltale' read-outs, of other life-signs as she stared back into the empty beaming chamber; as if it were a locked door she'd finally stopped pounding on.

"Damaged goods," she muttered, as Kirk sat on the steps before her.

"You and me, both," he smiled.

"I suppose next they'll want to withdraw from the Federation," Vina sighed. "Till all of this works its way out. Till I'm no longer a galactic criminal."

"I don't know," he shrugged; trying to imagine a Federation without the steady, calm influence of the Vulcans. Then, he asked more privately, "what happened last night, in sickbay?" as Scotty put the transporter controls into standby mode.

"It was a very rough night," she allowed, also just above a whisper.

"Spock says you and the keeper were racing back across time, trying to change the past, or to stop each other from changing the past, or…"

"It fell into chaos," she nodded, and even smiled, as if a draw was the best she could have hoped for, in that particular battle.

"What would you do, if you could succeed," he wondered, his eyes seeming to rove over all the possibilities, in mid-air.

"Make it so it never happened," she said, as if she'd said it a thousand times already.

"And then you'd never have known Chris Pike," Kirk said, as if it was a painful choice.

"Maybe." They sat in silence, except for the loud thrumming of the entangled particle generators behind the bulkheads.

"Can you tell if it's—if the keeper's—truly under control once again?"

"I wish I could." She gave him a serious look.

"And that's why we're not going down to Vulcan right now," Kirk said.

"It's not just the keeper," Vina said, sitting up and seizing the debate. "It's me, and Spock, and even you—we're all part of that… disease vector, the tidal pull of dreams. And the waves of ambition, sent out from Talos IV. And the debts of love."

"But that's every man or woman who ever lived," Kirk shook his head, getting up as if he wanted to pace back and forth, but choosing instead to stand and look stalwart and determined. You couldn't turn your back on all of humanity, simply because of love and unbearable loss, could you? Surely Vulcan made allowance…

A lieutenant in a red dress came in through the automatic door, and took over for Mr. Scott, who'd evidently called for relief with the press of a few buttons. With a nod to the captain, the chief engineer walked out of the transporter room, and headed down to the cavernous engine room.

_Abandoned again_, Kirk mused, but dare not say.

It didn't seem to matter for, even without telepathy, Vina already seemed to know what he was thinking. She glanced down at her aged hands.

"It's funny, you know," she said. "I feel much younger when I'm fighting them."

"Then I hope you have a lot more fight left in you," the captain said, suddenly impatient. He walked to the sliding door, and Vina set the motorized wheelchair in motion with her palms along the arm-rails, catching up.

"How much longer will we be at Vulcan," she asked, as crewmen hurried this way and that, around them in the corridor. "If they don't want us here, I mean."

"We're leaving as soon as possible," Kirk decided, there and then, as he marched along. Somehow, though, he was able to make it sound like a long-term plan, from a decision made days ago. Vina nodded and even smiled a bit, knowing a bit about starship captains, by now.

"Of course," the handsome man with the fancy ship went on, over fifty-five years earlier, "the psy-cops on Marcus II didn't particularly care for that kind of practical joke, after the way I got around them that second time!"

"Scratch Marcus II off the list, then," Vina smiled, as the ship streaked across space, farther and farther from Earth and Starfleet.

"How many is that, my dear?" the mustached man asked, looking perplexed, as his eyes wandered over her head, at the dials and readouts and flashing lights above.

"Fifteen," Vina said, without having to think about it. The handsome pilot just smiled and shook his head.

"Well," he shrugged, a faint, singsong hint of an Irish accent coming into his voice, "fifteen planets down, ten billion to go."

"I don't want to go anyplace settled, I told you," she said, smiling in spite of herself, and staring out at the stars streaking by.

"Oh, lassie, there's settled, and then there's _settled_. You never know what you'll find under a rock, even on the most civilized planet—in fact, they're the worst of the lot, if you go by my own personal experience!"

"I understand that," Vina nodded, settling back into the heated co-pilot's seat. "But I need an undisturbed site to study, not some half-dug-up planet where everyone's already grabbing for every last acre."

"Ah! Lookin' for buried treasure, are ye?"

"Not exactly," she said. "Just lost civilizations."

"There's lost civilizations on every planet between Earth and Rigel, nowadays—civilization's always the first thing that's lost, when humans start wanting to get their own ways over everything else, you know." He smiled, quite pleased with his own word play.

"I don't know if I'm sick of you, or just madly in love," Vina said, staring out the portal again.

"Well, it's really impossible to tell which is which, after a certain point."

"What's that," she said quietly, as if the new blinking indicator on the control panel might overhear them.

"Well, Miss Orwell," the mustached man began, but she hastily cut him off.

"We said no names, remember?" It was as if anonymity could somehow protect her from her two battling Vulcan fates.

"Ah, yes, of course," he nodded, a strange little smile lighting his face. "No names. No names at all!" He tapped the blinking light, and a screen popped up before them on the panel, showing ships passing by peacefully in warp-space. "Why is it all the most interesting women have to have so _very_ many little rules?"

"Because we can," she purred. "Why is it that all sorts of men just like to break the rules, for their own pleasure?"

"Point well-taken," he declared, watching the two ships on the screen, going by harmlessly.

"And just how did you happen to be in that coffee shop," Vina resumed, "right when I was looking for a way off-planet?"

"Well," he protested, drawing the word out like a wind-blown scarf, "I'm not sure all that's exactly in line with this 'no-names' rule you've concocted. If you don't mind me saying so!" If anything, he was becoming merrier by the moment, as if they were a pair of kittens, fighting over some little mouse that was the actual, unspoken truth.

"Oh, I get it," the anthropologist nodded, folding her arms suspiciously. "You just lie in wait for young girls to come by, and whisk them off into space, to keep you amused during your own little adventures."

"And what is all of life, but a series of little adventures and _divertissements_?"

"You mean, besides science and learning and building on the framework of knowledge of a thousand years' research and theorizing?"

"Well, you can't theorize an old man back into a child, or a crone back into a girl, can you? So, what's the use of science?"

"Who wants to be young and ridiculous all over again? I'm finally my own person," Vina said, heaving a little sigh of relief that she had made it out on her first unsupervised mission, against all odds.

"Ah, but that's where you're wrong—being ridiculous is a lifelong occupation," he said, though he still looked perfectly elegant, sitting there in his jacket and slacks. "You're bound to be ridiculous when you're young, and probably when you're old, too, though nobody will tell you so, except your spouse, and that's just their job. So, why not just stay in practice, in between? That's what I believe, anyway. 'Make a commitment, every day, to be ridiculous.' It's a pity we can't be young again, and a shame we think it's beneath us. I mean," he said, seeming to want to exhibit an impossibly high level of sincerity, "if you scientists only want dignity and honor, how can any of us trust you to do what's right?"

"If I told you," she said, ever so slightly aggravated, "that I could describe the entire Universe in terms of energy and mass and waves of interacting forces—"

"Then we'd none of us be any the wiser, now would we? It's no different than saying that particular cloud of gas nebula looks like a crab, or that old exploded star over there looks like a pair of golden church bells, now, is it?"

"Fine, it's not enough to just describe a thing," she said, trying not to shout over his pure delight in being contrary, "but if you know all the different ways the Universe keeps us trapped, a million different ways, every single one of us, then you'll also know all the ways you can set yourself free, right? Fair enough?"

Now, at least for one brief moment, he genuinely seemed intrigued and respectful, and no impish smile deflected her serious intent. But she wasn't prepared for that kind of respect, somehow.

"Good lord, it is like being married," she growled at last. He merely smiled again, and shimmied himself deeper into his pilot's seat, as if his entire body had momentarily wagged like a dog's tail.

"Now, when you say," he resumed, very graciously, "you'll know—through scientific methods, of course—all the different ways you can set yourself free…"

"Yes?" she said, growing icy with suspicion.

"Well, of course," he waved away all the sudden distance between them, in the cockpit, "there are a million kinds of science—there's laboratory science, and then there's what you might call 'practical' science, too—the science of people and the way they make their choices, wouldn't you say?"

"That's economics," she said, almost in exasperation, as though she probably knew a lot more about that, too.

"Well, I suppose you could say so," he allowed. "But… the number of variables in any human equation must be at least _somewhat _limited…"

"There's no way of knowing. Unless you already know a lot about the person you're trying to predict, or the rules they live by. Or, can read their mind," she added, suddenly remembering T'Mara's admonition about telepathy and privacy. "Then, I suppose, theoretically, you could change any decision they might choose to make. If you could ever really get inside their heads, and really know them well enough."

"Ah. Fair enough," he said. "But we're all limited by our own fear and doubt and station in life, aren't we?" He didn't seem entirely displeased—it was more like he appreciated the idea that he was just as right as any scientist, merely from what he'd learned about life himself.

The same light started blinking again on the control panel, and he tapped the area where the screen would pop up. But when it did, it wasn't two more ships arcing peacefully across on either side, like before—it was the sight of one vessel coming right up from behind. Gradually, silently, they were forced to admit that it was matching their own course and speed.

"Expecting any visitors, are ye now, lass?" He was clearly trying to remain calm and affable. But he was also sighing more and more, and his eyes became fixed on the navigation panel, as his mouth twitched under that moustache like a snake crawling through the grass.

"Well, yes and no," she sighed, comparing T'Mara and T'Lan in her mind—one fearing what she'd do with some unimaginably dangerous, potentially cataclysmic "free will" and the other seeming to be perfectly content to release her to a horrible, inevitable fate that most certainly awaited her. The two professors glowered down at her, from a dark little stage in Vina's mind, for the one-hundredth time today.

"How about you," she asked, feeling the stress rising up within him, as the other ship rode up effortlessly on their warp-wake.

"Ah, well," he said, sitting up in his chair and putting on a cheerful, brave face, though his eyes had taken on a glassy, worried look. "It's not the Star Fleet, and it's not the Rigel patent office, I'm fairly sure."

"Then we should be fine," the beautiful young scientist nodded, not believing a word of it.

"Now, if you'll pardon me for saying so," her gentleman friend said, not quite able to drop the subject, as they both watched the other ship following along behind, "if you've got Vulcans after you, they must some fairly logical reason at the bottom of it all, wouldn't you say?"

"That's what they tell me," Vina said.

"I can see your mind going, but the words aren't quite coming out," her pilot smiled, that twitch reappearing between the corner of his mouth and this time extending all the way up to his right eye. Very small beads of sweat were popping out on his forehead, though she couldn't imagine why.

"Sorry," she said, as if waking from a dream.

"_Vulcans_," the gentleman prodded, very quietly, and very gently, but without the slightest hint he'd give up on the topic any time soon: as if he was a chap who'd been through more than his share of unpleasant interrogations, already.

"Oh, well," she shook her head, to suggest there was no point in trying to really understand alien races.

"Well, as you know," she sighed again, and shrugged, "my professor—one of my professors—from the academy was very intent on not letting me go off on my studies, after I completed my work as a student—"

"Ah," her new boyfriend smiled, nodding affably, but unmistakably filled with mistrust. His forehead had begun to grow red, from stress.

"And so, this male Vulcan professor, he just felt…" she made the mistake of glancing across at the mustached gentleman again and seeing his penetrating stare, which had grown quite desperate, in spite of his forced smile. He glanced, needlessly, at the little dots on the navigation screen between them. The other ship seemed to be closing.

"I see," he nodded, very quickly, going just a bit crazy for a moment, "he was madly in love with you and you were young and foolish and irresistible to him, and well, these things happen, and now he just can't live without you, is that it?" His tone became strained, going from a caramel baritone to piercing Irish tenor, almost as if he were being tortured on the rack.

"No, of course not," she said, slightly appalled at the sudden emergence of that dark, guilty mood that lurks beneath the surface of all men.

"Now I see," her pilot and lover and fellow traveler said, withdrawing into himself, as if a panic were beginning to set in. He looked down at his own hands on the ship's controls, as they sped along at a brisk warp two, probably the ship's own maximum speed. "This is something else. What could it be… Fate, and choices, and danger…" His eyes darted back and forth at the controls, and to her own eyes.

"You _have_ broken a time-line," he said, and it took his breath away. She couldn't tell if he was contemplating either the riches of the Universe unfolding before him, or the threat of imminent blindness, from his first taste of Carolina moonshine.

"No—not yet, anyway," she said, glancing down at the trailing ship behind them, on the screen.

"But don't you see? Free will wins out over fate!" He was suddenly jubilant, and that scared her even more. "Any predetermined future that tied you down is suddenly, irrevocably, thrown out the window—because you've done what all of us dream of doing! You've snatched your future from the jaws of fate itself!"

"Now you're talking like an idiot," she said, suddenly wishing the other ship would just overtake them, and be filled with some dramatic, handsome time-police from beyond chronology, or something. But it was probably only one of her old professors, of course, trying to stop her. Or, maybe, to speed her to her doom.

"And that means, by extension," the handsome, mustached gentleman reasoned, as if calculating out an unexpected fortune in compound interest, "my own fate is unsealed, as well…" He looked at her, and something in his smile suggested they both shared some wonderful past/present/future together, and would continue to do so, for as long as he chose.

"You _are _an idiot!" she exclaimed, pushing herself out of the co-pilot's chair, and marching down the dark paneled hallway, and that oddly cheerful, canary yellow carpeting, to lock herself in the bathroom.

It was quite pleasant in there, big fluffy towels and gleaming nozzles and sprayers, but his face appeared once again, like an oracle, in the mirror over the bathroom vanity, between the locked door and the pearly sonic shower enclosure.

"Now, let's not be too hasty," he cooed, though his face grew to fill the entire mirror, like a gibbous moon. "All I'm saying," he reasoned, looking quite pleased with himself, "is that anything we do from here on out, together—"

"I don't know what you think you mean by 'together.' I'm just out here to uncover dry old bones and bits of broken pottery on the deadest specks of dust I can possibly land on!" Her words sounded grave and firm, even as she sat down on the toasty-warm toilet seat.

"But don't you see?" He wasn't giving up at all. "All we have to do is test the fabric of this time-space, and any time something unexpected happens, we know we're breaking free of the prison of inevitability!"

"You can just drop me off at the nearest Starbase," she said, reaching across the vanity and tapping the mirror screen to shut it off.

"Look," his voice said, still as clear as if he was sitting right next to her, amidst the porcelain and glass and fluff and mirrors, "as a scientist, as a woman of the highest training," he added, his voice becoming like honey again, "you must find the possibilities to be endless! I mean, nobody's died, and together we have a ship and…" his voice became plummy and just a bit wicked, "the brains between us, to really make something big happen…"

"That's outside my training," she said, growing annoyed.

"Well it's not outside of mine…" His voice became dark and gloating.

And, straining through the hull of the ship, she could hear the hum of the warp-drive powering down: the high-pitch of the dilithium crystals channeling anti-matter against matter, but slowing: warbling down to almost nothing—to a low, slow whisper.

And, soon, that other ship was bound to over-take them.

28

28

_By Richard T. Green_


	4. Chapters 8 and 9

_Vina Escaped II: Green Blood, Red Blood_

**Chapter Eight **

**CAPTAIN'S LOG, Stardate 4207.071: **_We've left Vulcan to return to our original mission against the spreading keepers … our 'war' against a dead planet. It seems the only way we can be sure to avoid further contamination… although contamination is sure to come, soon enough. The only question is where… and when. _

Mr. Spock was standing by his side, as a yeoman took the log entry and left the bridge. He looked troubled, or maybe just a bit more ponderous than usual.

"What is it, first officer?"

"As we travel through space, I am concerned that our own captive keeper may eventually serve as a beacon, guiding others to us along our way."

Kirk nodded, though it was only the nod of his acceptance of their lot. It seemed they were destined to keep stumbling across horrific problems, and bizarre, cruel illusions to explain them, for some time to come.

"Fair enough," the captain said, watching the stars race past on the main viewscreen.

"And, there is the question of the past," Spock added.

"As always, Mr. Spock," Kirk said, finally turning to his right, to face the half-Vulcan.

"But in this case, as Dr. Orwell evidently proceeds to tailor her own past, a new time-line emerges, which destabilizes us, in ways we cannot yet know."

"And, what if it can't be changed," Kirk asked at last, feeling a coldness come over him. He folded his hands in his lap, like a schoolboy in the principal's office.

"It can, though perhaps not in this precise time-line," Spock conceded.

"Then it's our fate to just go on, hunting keepers till… they're all gone… or we are."

"Perhaps," Spock said, and actually sighed at this. Then, with a little nod of resignation, he turned on his heel and stepped back up to the science station, to scan for whatever lay ahead of them, or whatever now pursued.

But Kirk got up and followed him, leaning pensively on the red grab-rail.

"Then do I kill it, or let it live?"

"Every Jim Kirk, in every imaginable Universe, may be asking himself the same thing right now," his Vulcan friend said.

But the captain had no patience for paradoxes.

"You and Vina went down into its mind before, through its subconscious, and into its own past, through a chain of shared conscience, to change the destiny of Talos, 750,000 years ago. But, as far as we know, in this Universe, Talos is still in ruins, and… so is she," he added, thinking of Vina, back down in sickbay.

"I am forced to point out that both the environment of Talos, and indeed the health of the Earth anthropologist are quite notably on the mend, Captain," his first officer replied calmly. "Therefore, some change has occurred."

"And it seems like precisely one keeper is harmless, for now."

"Out of potentially thousands like them, that have flooded the galaxy."

Kirk grew annoyed at being handed the same plate of leftover problems again and again, from yesterday, and the day before.

"Uhura," he said, clenching and unclenching one hand as he walked past her, halfway toward the lift doors, and then back again.

"Aye, sir?"

"Any sign, on subspace radio, of more outbreaks of strange violence, or…" He didn't even know where to go with that sentence, the ramifications of their problem being so broad.

"No sir," she replied, looking calm but serious. "But, all across the mainstems, there's speculation about the black starships—" her voice dropped down to a whisper, as if the next words were still utterly unspeakable: "when we were observing Protocol Eight, in mourning for you, and came down firing on Rigel."

And then he stopped himself from asking how the _Enterprise _could possibly be held to blame, since they were only trying to blend in with the other renegades, before they broke the keepers' spell. No one would stop to observe the delicate tactical considerations of that situation, as two freed ships tried to liberate two others in secret. Before they all began tearing each other to shreds, with phasers and photon torpedoes. Before Vulcan turned its back.

"It's just crazy, sir," she replied, furrowing her brow, still speaking quietly: "People saying that Starfleet has somehow become the enemy of the Federation, or that it's been taken over by the keepers, or—you name it, it's out there."

When he turned around to look at the main viewer, he realized everyone else on the bridge had turned to face him too, or quickly remembered to look back to their stations, in the case of Mr. Chekhov and Mr. Sulu at the helm. Each wondered, now, at their guilt—and if all the glory of the _Enterprise _had suddenly vanished.

"Spock," he said, to the seemingly unperturbed science officer.

"Yes, Captain?"

"What was the name of the planetary manager, back on Saldana II, where we first met Vina? Where _I_ first met Vina…"

"Josiah Holdenreid, mayor of the settlement," the first officer replied, without hesitation.

"Lieutenant," Kirk said, half-turning back to Uhura. "Send Mayor Holdenreid, of Saldana II, my regards. Ask him to please consider issuing a public statement as to how he and the crew of the _Enterprise _were able to work together, to free his planet from the… scourge… of the keepers. To break the hateful power of illusion."

"Aye, Captain," Uhura said, eager to tackle the problem at last, the same way she'd tackled the keeper on their bridge, when he was suddenly revealed to them five days ago.

"And, on my authority," he added, "call up the visuals of the inter-ship battles, after Rigel. Put those out there, on the mainstems, too. Release them… to the public."

This was an extremely serious breach of regulations, but she hesitated only a moment before tapping her long nails on the control panel, searching for those infamous details: four electro-statically blackened starships, each dark in mourning under Protocol Eight, two of them pouring down their fire on Rigel in misplaced vengeance, and then two-against-two, firing upon each other in a ruthless series of confrontations, before all the keepers on board were finally hunted down.

Now, to Kirk's surprise, Spock had risen from his post, and stood at his side, opposite the main screen.

"Would that not inspire as much hysteria as the rumors, themselves? The idea that the mightiest ships in the Federation could be so easily turned to destruction?"

"I don't know," Kirk admitted. "But I don't want people to think we're some monolithic evil, either." Then he turned suddenly, in that very particular way they'd all grown used to, as if the captain were hearing a sudden tree limb, crashing to the ground behind him. As if he were suddenly seeing things in a new way.

"Black ships, swooping down from the sky… controlled by the people who master our dreams…" he turned, squinting at Spock, who was merely listening politely.

"If you are going to suggest," the first officer said, "this reminds you of your twentieth century, or perhaps your twenty-first century Earth, I would hasten to remind you it also resembles the occasional eras of piracy, on your open seas, and on other oceaned-planets, in the centuries preceding. And the penny-press that made them legends in their own times."

"But those weren't… governments, turning on their own people, through militarism and mind-control," Kirk said, mildly aggravated by the pirate analogy.

"Correct," Spock said, "but the human mind is always on guard against some dark force on the horizon, whether from the sea or the sky. Or even from within."

"Yes, Mr. Spock, and now that dark force is… Starfleet," the captain said, folding his arms, and then pinching his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger.

"It is simply the nature of men," Spock said, his eyes naturally wandering over the computer readouts as well, all around them, "to be wary of power."

"But it's _not_ our nature, Spock, to be ruled by nightmares."

The Vulcan looked as though he was about to disagree, but Kirk was already heading back to the red turbolift doors.

"I'm going to go down… to check on our guest," he muttered. "Sickbay," he said, as the doors snapped shut. And the first officer watched the stars streak by, as Uhura dictated that request to Saldana II.

He paused in front of a mini-weapons locker, when he got out of the lift, and clipped a small hand-phaser onto his belt. McCoy stood to greet him in the doctor's office on deck five, and the captain offered his arm for another anti-psychotic shot.

"Not necessary, I don't think, Jim," McCoy said, glancing at where he'd injected the captain the night before.

"Why not?"

"I'm fairly certain it's under control again," he answered, leading Kirk into the wardroom. "See? We're even getting life-readings up there, at last."

And, indeed, the Talosian's powerful pulse was finally being registered on the dark screen overhead, where it lay. Like the Vulcans, there was almost no heartbeat, with a circulatory system that was now completely decentralized, till the slender remnants of a heart were merely an adjunct to its lungs.

As if to confirm the harmlessness, the graphic needles over its giant head showed the keeper's metabolic levels were finally hovering at low levels across the board. However, as Jim Kirk looked at the readings, his own blood ran cold.

_You see, Captain, _a thin, metallic voice said calmly, _how simple a matter it is for us to control your people, after sufficient research into the innermost recesses of their minds. _

"Bones," Kirk said, stepping backward, out of the wardroom. The doctor stood upright, from over the keeper's bed, where he'd been trying to get some more detailed readings of its innermost mind. "It spoke."

"That's impossible, Jim."

"No," Kirk said, feeling spooked and violated all at once.

"Maybe you _do_ need another shot," McCoy said, almost to himself, passing the Captain as he walked along the row of beds to pick up a hypo from a tray.

"No, not this time," Kirk said. It was hard to tell if he was angry, or embarrassed, or both.

_The reason we are able to stoke the fears of a trillion of your people, across this section of the galaxy, _it seemed to be saying into his mind, _is because of your own success. In an age of ultimate freedoms, none of you can see the need for an ultimate military force, in your epoch of greatest power. However, this creates a natural suspicion among the weak and protected. And now, your might alone shall be your undoing. _

"That's it," Kirk said, reaching back under his tunic, to take a hand-phaser off his belt. But it wasn't there.

"Sorry, Jim," McCoy said, now standing at his side, the weapon in his own hand. His face was frozen like a mask, and his pale blue eyes quite distant as he stared into Kirk's.

"Bones!"

"You've been under a lot of stress, the last few days, I know," the doctor said, in a kind of somnambulant half-voice. His lips barely moved. "Let's not have any recklessness, as a result."

Then, all at once, his eyes widened as he stared into Kirk's, and he dropped the phaser. The captain, seeing McCoy's hand gradually go numb, caught the weapon before it clattered to the deck.

"What is it, Bones," Kirk said, standing up, and grasping his friend by the shoulder.

"I—it's the strangest thing," McCoy said, shaking his head suddenly. "I was suddenly staring at a mirror-image of myself! Sorry, Jim, I don't know what happened."

This was doubly odd, of course, because they were standing in the doorway to the wardroom, and the keeper's body was lying there like a pinned insect. Likewise, Vina seemed to be asleep, a few beds away.

"The war goes on," Kirk said, shaking his head, and glancing at both of the sleeping telepaths.

"And," McCoy said, his voice going even softer now, "the question is, which one poses the greater danger."

Kirk nodded. "The one that can turn this ship to evil, or the one that's bent on changing her past, and all of our lives along with it."

They walked out into the hall, as if neither patient could read their thoughts through the walls out there.

"She's only trying to do the same thing we are," McCoy resumed quietly, huddled with the captain, as officers, ensigns and yeomen walked past. "Except in her case, she may be able to go back and save lives, on Saldana, on Rigel, and Wrigley, and God knows where else—by stopping the keepers, before they can do the damage they've already done." Then, the doctor seemed to examine his own ridiculous-sounding words, and started back in to the medical complex, shaking his head in dismay. "Now I'm talking like that!"

The sickbay doors closed behind him, and Kirk was alone, out in the corridor.

"_Captain to the bridge_," came Spock's voice, over the ship's intercom.

**Chapter Nine**

Spock stepped out of the captain's chair, when Jim Kirk appeared by the center seat a few minutes later. Without any preliminary niceties, the first officer launched right into his summary.

"The science team has been tracking the movements of other ships since they left the Starfleet flotilla, over the last standard week," the Vulcan said, walking up to his computer console at Kirk's right. He turned to the fore of the ship, looking at the main viewer, and pressed a few buttons without looking at the controls.

A complicated star-map came up on the big screen, with too many curving lines going out from the same point—where the fleet had been sent for safe keeping, a quarantined armada, theoretically safe from the keepers' grasp. And the many lines breaking away showed where they had all departed, after a temporary solution had been found.

"As per your request to Starfleet," Spock said, sitting down at the science station, "nearly every starship in the flotilla has been equipped with prisoners of similar description to K'Toinne, whom we met by chance, during our own escape from this vessel nearly five days ago."

Kirk nodded, wondering where the strangely thin, astonishingly mild Klingon could be right now, in his newly acquired stealth ship. He almost envied the former prisoner: hated by his own people, and saving the _Enterprise _by virtue of this crew's hatred of Klingons.

"Needless to say," Spock said, anyway, "the addition of such hostile characters to a secure bridge was… not entirely welcomed on every starship."

"Needless to say, Mr. Spock."

"However, it now appears that each starship has been rid of the keepers' menace, through a means similar to our own, and returned each of their captive Klingons to the nearest star-base," the Vulcan added. Once again, he turned to look at the large forward screen himself. "Here are the various paths of each lead vessel, from the secure holding point, back to their regular territories across Federation space."

Those lines, representing starships, were traced in gold and blinked for emphasis when he pressed lightly on certain touch-pads.

"And here are all of the smaller ships," he went on, and the gold curving lines stopped flashing, "which are believed to have returned to normal duties as well."

Those flight paths, of cargo ships, scout ships, and other support vessels, now blinked in dimmer blue: many dozens of curving lines, appearing and disappearing, and going every which-way across two arms of the galaxy, from the same point, the former quarantine zone, in distant space.

"Obviously," Spock conceded, "there were not enough prisoners to go on board each of the smaller ships. And so, Starfleet has monitored the paths of all these smaller vessels, since the downgrade to yellow alert."

Kirk nodded cautiously at that, but supposed that each of the great starships could keep track of a certain number of smaller ships, if there were hostile telepaths still hiding on any of them. It seemed a little unlikely though, after he and Spock had destroyed their way station, that strange transporter, on Talos IV—melted it into the ground, months after Captain Pike's mind restored it, through Vina's working hands: a last gesture of love, and his way of setting her free. Their mind link had become possible only after the keepers had given them injections of Talosian blood, after every other life-sustaining resource had run out. But Kirk was quite certain that the keepers, who got out, before he put a stop to that ancient technology, were still getting around on ships they'd commandeered, using their power of illusion.

"And then," Spock heaved a particularly deep breath, "there is the USS _Grace_."

_At last_, Kirk thought, _we get to the point_.

"Here is the map I made on Talos, based on tricorder readings from the deepest levels of their subterranean society."

_Oops, spoke too soon_, Kirk realized, as the lecture went on.

"Now, a third map, which I drew ten days ago in the soot beneath Talos," he said, and another set of space-trails drifted onto the star-map: blue lines, gold lines, and now this third seemingly random set of curved lines and dots.

The whole viewscreen was getting unusually cluttered today. And, for a fraction of a second, Jim Kirk wondered what it must be like to have a non-Vulcan first officer, whose mind wasn't always solving a million problems at once.

But then the human captain felt a jolt of energy run through him, as he recognized an unexpected pattern. That final map-graphic, which began as a primitive sketch in the ashes of ancient technology, had just spun, in what seemed like three dimensions. It oriented along with to the current flight-path of the _Enterprise_, and things were suddenly fitting together.

"The recent stopover points of three of these smaller vessels," Spock nodded, as a trio of blue lines continued to blink, "correspond to the last known beam-points of keepers traveling along the routes on that Talosian map. Here, here, and here." The lanky science officer had stepped over to sweep one long finger this way and that, across the big screen.

"Like invasion points," Kirk said. "Where the stranded keepers hitched a ride, to somewhere else."

"And here are the profiles of each of those likely destinations," Spock went on.

"Lieutenant Uhura," Kirk said, "message Starfleet: quarantine those three vessels at, or before they reach, those destinations."

"Copying from Science," Uhura nodded, over his right shoulder.

"Two of those destination points lie within Federation space, and can be readily investigated by the _Hornet _and the _Farragut_," Spock resumed. "However," he added, "the third is beyond Federation space, and may merit a check by the _Enterprise_."

"And that's where the _Grace _seems to be headed?"

"Correct," Spock said. "Our star-charts designate HJL-971 as having the only habitable moon in the region."

"On screen."

The annoyingly complex lines and webs of maps were all wiped away, gone in an instant, and Jim Kirk took a deep breath of relief as the new, simpler picture came up: an enhanced image of a very distant solar system. Now the ship's computers drew graceful, elliptical lines of planetary orbits around a perfectly normal-looking yellow star at the center. The captain nodded in satisfaction, as he could see Mr. Sulu working on a course to that particular dot, out there in unexplored space.

"Very good. Helm, lay in a course," he said, as if it all could be done in one's sleep.

"Aye, sir."

But, almost as soon as they'd lined-up the _Enterprise _on her new heading, he felt a strange melancholy come over him—the burden of command, or the hopelessness one felt in the midst of a great, entrenched battle—and he took a sharp, impatient breath to dispel the feeling, as quickly as the mood flooded his soul.

It didn't go away, though. In fact, the sense of despair quickly became like a headache, over his sinuses, behind his eyes, even seeping down his arms. It made him angry to think a mood could take him so brazenly.

And, just like that, he realized the grim nature had come upon him, like being beaten up and thrown in a ditch, in the moment when they'd set a course to find the one of the last remaining keepers—just as they established a link, perhaps, with their own (seemingly) subdued Talosian in sickbay.

Somehow, as Spock had predicted, the abilities of their keeper and the keeper they expected to find out there around HJL-971 had connected, or perhaps the one they hunted just realized they were after him, from the sudden approach of its long-lost brother. In either case, Jim Kirk nodded, for the challenge was taken up.

He tried to look youthful and energetic. But, when you're suddenly so inescapably depressed—for no apparent reason—even the air itself seems heavy on your back.

"Spock," he began, "do you feel anything… unusual, now that we're headed to meet another one of them?"

The Vulcan took an almost undetectably short, appraising look at his captain.

"No, sir," he answered, "but I would not rule out the possibility that, once they realized they were being pursued again, they would launch a counter-attack of some nature."

Kirk nodded, looking as if his throat had suddenly become dry, at the verification of his theory.

"Do you require a visit to sickbay?" The Vulcan was too polite to just say it outright, that the captain _ought_ to go get another shot of anti-psychotic, but Spock seemed to place a slight emphasis on the word "sickbay."

"I suppose I do," Kirk said, his eyebrows rising, and his shoulders along with them, in a great shrug of inevitability. "Better safe, than sorry, right?"

Spock looked at him another fraction of a moment, pityingly.

"You have the con, first officer," Kirk said, trying not to sigh again, and turning for the long walk back to the lift. There was something annoying about giving-in to one's own weakness, of course. But he finally knew that someone else was exploiting his mood: someone who (perhaps) had finally learned to fear him.

Then he had the strangest feeling, once the red doors snapped shut, and the lift began to descend: that he had come to this position of greatest power and influence, possibly the greatest he'd ever have, or that any man might ever have, at a time when men were finally able to simply be humans again, as they traveled out in space. That, at long last, after three hundred years of exploration, things had come full-circle, and the test of the truth of it was this: that now, at last, they could go about the galaxy, restoring the humanity—the 'personhood' of others around them, still struggling. Too bad he realized it just as all of that was about to be stolen away.

The lift had almost come to a stop as he completed the thought, but when the red doors snapped open again, another realization hit him: that in spending all his time making the Universe a little less hostile for everyone else, he had made himself a stranger to his own soul, to his own 'personhood.' Giving up every chance at lasting humanity, for the sake of others.

He reached out, without really being aware that he was falling, to catch the frame of the lift doors. And he thought his very soul was going to vomit, somehow, at any moment. His eyes became hazy with tears, though his grief in that moment was far deeper than crying.

Somehow he stepped out into the corridor, and a pretty ensign paused and turned back to look at him again, just as she'd passed.

"Sir?"

"Sickbay," he managed to say. Looking rather stricken herself, the girl in the blue mini-dress stepped under his shoulder, grasping his arm and holding him up. And, keeping their eyes straight ahead, they marched slowly around the big curve of offices and labs and officers' cabins. He barely looked at her, or at his boots shuffling forward, as if he'd finally run out of humanity to hand out to others, so freely.

He could see that her own little hand on the golden sleeve of his tunic was clenched so tight that her skin was turning red—as if he really was falling, and she was merely catching him with each lurching step forward. And he realized, everywhere one went in space, everyone was falling.

Now both of her shoulders were under one of his arms, somehow, like some slender rock rising up out of the ocean, as waves of unconsciousness washed over him. And they just kept going around that endless curve. But then there was another rock under his other arm. And then he was watching the lights in the ceiling, racing up toward him, and racing past: always falling. But falling together, instead of alone now.

Then, a moment later, he was simply lying peacefully on a bed in sickbay. As always, his first thought upon waking was "I've got to get to the bridge!"

"Whoa, hold it, Jim," a familiar voice said, by his side. He looked one way, and saw the comatose keeper in one bed, to his right—and McCoy on the other side, with Vina looking bored on her own bed to his left. The round, dim lights of the joint restoring equipment hovered quietly over her hips and knees. She stared back, knowingly, as McCoy peered at him with more scientific concern in between.

Then he smiled a little smile, at the Earth woman.

"You look nice," he said, though it sounded foolish.

"Why, thank you, Captain," Dr. McCoy said, cutting Vina off before she could speak, herself. "Just a little cosmetic therapy, and every one of those facial scars are practically gone now."

Vina smiled and nodded, though her talented physician intercepted the very first compliment she got. She did look a good deal better, and the hump on her shoulder was nearly gone now, too. But once again, McCoy held the reins of conversation in his own department.

"Spock says you came under some kind of… spell."

"Did he really say 'spell'?"

"Well, no, but who can remember all that Vulcan mumbo-jumbo, anyway? I just gave you another shot, plus a mild sedative, and here we are, six hours later."

"Six- any other cases?"

"Like yours? None reported. But why not just take a day or two and rest up, before we get to… wherever it is we're going?"

But Kirk was already sitting up, with barely a glance over his shoulder at the sleeping Talosian.

"A day off may be the only thing that brings you back up to human, if you want my medical opinion," McCoy said, as he stood up over the captain, who was leaning forward to bring his boots down onto the deck again.

Then Kirk's eyes fell on Vina, spending another long day in rejuvenation therapy, just laying there a few beds from her old enslaver.

"I don't know which is worse," he said, smiling to Vina. "Making you spend all your time with one of your former tormentors, or keeping… that… being locked up in its own mind, like that," he said, his smile going flat as he glanced over his shoulder.

"I wouldn't worry," Vina said, as the usual wry smile playing across her newly rejuvenated face. "As far as the keeper is concerned, it's always dream-time. He's stolen enough from me to keep him like that for a long time."

"And you?" It was the serious, determined Captain Kirk who had come out of nowhere.

"Everything I had," she sighed, closing her eyes as though it the last time, "has been turned inside out, a thousand times over, Captain. Most of my life—my old life—is just a shattered mirror."

"Stay with it," he nodded, and walked out into the doctor's office, where McCoy had gone, and now sat at his desk.

"Is there any way we can split them up, Bones? Seems… cruel, to her, in a way."

"We're full up, Jim, you know it. What can I do, lock the alien in isolation? It could fool us all into destroying the whole ship, and then still be the only thing left alive, in an airtight tank. Till some new victim wanders by."

Kirk hadn't thought of that, yet. Everything about this enemy made it too dangerous, even too dangerous to get rid of. No wonder the Vulcans wouldn't take it off his hands.

Then he looked back into the wardroom again, where Nurse Chapel was taking note of Vina's readings, from the dark board and the vertical graphs.

"How will she ever know if she was successful, in the past?" he wondered.

"Maybe she'll just… cease to exist," McCoy said, as if a bubble had burst right before him, splashing him in the face. "Maybe she'll just go on in a dead-end existence, like so many other people, not knowing her past switched tracks, and left her here in the present, on the siding like some old caboose."

"Then," Kirk sighed, in bitterness and dismay, "how can we ever say we really helped her?"

"Jim," the doctor said, raising a hand to fend-off any more gloom and doom. "Maybe we're not here to help her, specifically."

That seemed even colder than the harsh realities he'd been considering.

"Seriously," McCoy continued, as if unaware of Kirk's stricken expression. "Maybe the damage is done—maybe she stopped existing a long time ago, and none of us can tell. Maybe she's just her own shadow reflection, now: projected into our present. Filling a gap, in dreams of our own. A collection of behaviors, and nothing else, just filling the space her other selves are truly living, in every other Universe."

"But she saved me from a mob, driven to madness, by… one of those."

"Sure," McCoy said. "Running on nothing but vengeance, like the concussion from some terrible explosion. An echo of her own fury, at containment."

"No, I don't believe that, not for a minute," Kirk said, looking angry, off into space. "I don't believe that anyone can just be… an echo of what they were meant to be. Not while there's still life in them."

Still, he had to admit, there was some internal logic to all of that. But Vina's love for Chris Pike had kept her alive, too, even when he seemed to be a ghost of his former self. It was just wrong, to Kirk, to say she was the final vibration of bell rung long ago. Though both lovers had been echoes of themselves, for so long.

That other ship was now only a million miles behind Vina and her charming boyfriend.

She had finally emerged from the locked bathroom, though his fear of Vulcans hadn't quite abated. She knew, because his eyes rarely left the scanner display between them, up on the console. She didn't know whether to be amused or worried, though, by this dashing fellow; or perhaps by T'Mara, who was certainly on board the ship that pursued.

She could see that his hair was thinning on top, in the back, and perhaps a little up front, too. But he had a fine moustache, and an irrepressible twinkle in his eye.

"You know who that is, don't you," he said, a nervous smile tugging his moustache this way and that.

"Yes, my old professor."

"And you were the apple of his eye, weren't you," the dashing pilot said, uneasily.

"Vulcan isn't suitable for apples."

"Yes, well," he sighed anxiously, "you still may be required to polish your own fruit for him, if we can't get away."

"But you can't," she said simply.

At this, he did turn, and angrily. His cheeks glowed red, and his round chin pushed his lower lip up like a proud man's chest, thrusting his mouth full up into his moustache.

"Well, didn't he teach you anything, my dear?" he said, flinching and sighing, alternately, till his angry had quieted into something a bit more charming.

"I suppose he did," she said, smiling at his fear of Vulcans. She tapped a few touch-pads on the controls and called up some new maps from the computer, and in a minute they were managing warp two-point-five, leaving the other ship behind, at least temporarily.

"You've a rather careless attitude toward all of this," he muttered, strangely, in the calm that cooled the cockpit air.

"Toward all of what," she asked, innocent as ever.

"That fellow works for the Star Fleet, doesn't he?"

"For the Academy," she said.

He looked at her as though she was a fool, for drawing distinctions.

"Is it the same thing? Vulcans don't seem to think so," she said, smiling.

While he watched the aft-scanner, she went back to playing with the maps on the other screens, using her fingertips to "flip" the constellations on the three-dimensional displays, as if she were a careful jeweler, about to cut some rare gem with a chisel. Then, she lingered over one map in particular.

"What is it," he whispered impatiently, as if her professor must be eavesdropping on their every word, from that other ship.

"Oh, just trying to imagine what he'll do next," she smiled, in spite of herself.

"I know what he'll do," her pilot said, almost too quietly to hear, biting his lip.

"And he knows what I'll do," she said.

"Ah, well, yes," the gentleman by her side said, rocking unconsciously in his chair, as if he were a dime-store cowboy, riding a hobby horse to scoot him away from Indians on the warpath.

She stared at the astrogation display again, as if some delicious idea had finally appeared in her head. Then she reached out and started re-focusing the maps, twisting views again in totally different arrangements.

"Ah, yes, well now, what are ye doin', lass?" he said, blinking rapidly, as if it was all too much to take in at once. He reached out to stop her, but clearly didn't know the first thing about very complex navigation. "Don't be wreckin' me little ship, now, will ye?"

"Anything I do, he'll understand immediately. And I know I can't get away from him."

"Well, that's a comfort," the gentleman said, without any sense of reassurance at all.

"So," Vina shrugged, still seeming fairly pleased with the problem before them, "we have to lead him somewhere he really doesn't want to go."

Now the big, nervous man shivered, or perhaps shook himself out of his anxiety, as he tried to understand the maps. Something in her manner, though, seemed sublimely confident.

"Which system is that?" he said, pushing himself back in his seat. It seemed both familiar and frightening all at once, to him.

"The only place he won't want to follow," she laughed. And, there on each different screen was a different view of a glowering red star, with a barely-class M planet racing around in orbit, almost too close for comfort.

"And maybe you'll be telling me," he winced, "exactly why he wouldn't want to be going home to his own dear Vulcan?"

"Too many questions," she sighed, quite pleased with herself. "Have you ever seen a Vulcan pull a phaser on another Vulcan?"

"No, but I'd pay real money for the privilege," he answered, twiddling his thumbs in his lap.

"You were right," she said, tapping in the new course settings. "We have broken the time-line—we do, with every decision that we make, of course. But he's the reason why."

"And that makes _him _the criminal, as far as Vulcan's concerned," the gentleman said, his pensive tone slowly changing to one of delight.

"That's my operating theory, anyway."

"Well," he shivered, "I suppose we'll be finding out, soon enough."

And now, he looked back down at that rear-view scanner once more. The other ship was closing fast, arcing around to match the yacht's new headings, and overtake.

Vina began looking for some other tactic, a distraction, an obstacle, or anything that might get her all the way to Vulcan first, and prevent her return to the narrow confines of Earth.

17

17

_By Richard T. Green_


	5. Chapters 10 and 11

_Vina Escaped II: Green Blood, Red Blood_

**Chapter Ten **

The other ship was upon them, quite literally, in a few minutes.

It appeared to be a medium-sized cargo ship, but much larger than this little yacht, of course. Its warp nacelles spread out from wing-like struts, which draped downward, like an artless reproduction of a Romulan scout ship. Then, out front, there was a very non-aerodynamic set of cubicles and sensor domes all crowded up on the prow, like a mouth that might have just been caught in the act of gobbling up some great monumental building in its snarling teeth.

Between the wings, above the cargo bay, was all dashed with pits and scars. Above were more cubicles, greater ones than in the nose, and on the underside was a large bay door, painted an acrid yellow color. It was battered too, but large enough to scoop them up like an _hors d'oeuvre_.

"You're sure that's not pirates," her pilot said, perplexed.

"Who ever heard of Vulcan pirates?" Vina mused, though she supposed anything was possible.

"And how long till we get to the world of the great saints of eternal logic, dear girl?"

"Two days, four hours, seven minutes." There was another strange silence, as his mouth worked to the left, and then to the right: as if he were juggling an invisible cigar, back and forth. He spoke very quietly:

"Thank ye, at least, for not botherin' to give me the seconds, lassie."

"There were no seconds, when you asked," she said, smiling at his inexplicable twitchiness. It all seemed so perfect, so clear-cut and easy to her—but not to him.

"Ah, well, I see." He looked away, as if he'd somehow managed to come up with the craziest beauty he'd ever met. His tone was grave when he spoke again: "And how long till the other ship intercepts?"

"Two minutes, seventeen—well, you don't want to know the seconds."

"That's perfectly all right, lassie," he sighed, looking grumpy and panicked, all at once. "Two days versus two minutes…"

He began fiddling with the controls, until the screens went red in vehement protest. She looked at him now, as if he was the crazy one.

"You can't get that kind of speed out of a ship this small," she said, touching a few light-pads closer to her, and then reaching across his nervous jabbing, to lock them in at warp two-point-five.

"You women are always telling me what I can't do," he declared, throwing his hands up in the air in sheer exasperation, as the cargo ship grew even bigger behind them.

"Well, what are you going to do if they grab me, and leave you with a burned-out ship in the middle of nowhere? Who do you think is coming to look for you, anyway?"

"You'd be surprised at all the people who'd be eager to come looking for me," he said, full of injured pride.

"Yes, I'm sure—police, Federation port authorities, customs agents, whoever really owns this ship..."

Now he seemed genuinely hurt, and blinked away a tear.

"So what are we going to do? You might as well just turn me over, and be done with it," she said. "I can get away another time. They'll be even more dead civilizations by the time I'm out this way again."

"An admirable point of view," he sniffed, as if he was somehow above it all. "However, I am duty-bound to protect you from any and all law enforcement, _and_ logic enforcement, not to mention time enforcement, and push you into some pre-determined fate."

"I'm noticing a theme here," she sighed, but not believing a word of it.

"So this professor of yours," he said, after a very brief moment of reflection, "is afraid of other Vulcans, is that what you were trying to say to me, earlier?"

"They take a dim view of breaking the time-line."

"Yes, well, they would, wouldn't they?"

"Yes, well, they would," she agreed.

They could hear the cringing of metal in their ship as the big cargo vessel clamped down on them, with its tractor beam, and started signaling them on the control panel. This close behind, they could practically just tap out a code against the hull. But, instead, a red light merely blinked insistently, and his hand darted this way and that, avoiding it, as if he couldn't make up his mind whether to swat it away, or just face up to it.

"Answer it, lassie. But if ye can just stall 'em for a few short minutes, it might help things along," he said, jumping up out of the pilot's seat, and disappearing down the paneled hall behind the cockpit.

She stared at him as he hurried away, and then back at the blinking red button. The other ship slowly dove under, and then rose up from below. She shivered a bit, feeling sick at the thought of that big set of cargo doors opening, like a mysterious, predatory sea creature: snapping them out of mid-air, before plunging back to the depths.

Then, she didn't know why, she began typing her answer to the hail in the touch-pads. Her throat was all tangled up at the idea of speaking to T'Mara again, under these circumstances, and it just seemed easier to communicate by keyboard. It also took longer, which was what her new boyfriend seemed to prefer.

And just as she'd imagined, the cargo ship's wings and that encrusted nose cone came up into view like an odd, bedraggled mound of space debris. And it just kept coming up, larger and larger, all around. Then she could see the cargo bay spreading out around the yacht, and then more and more of the bay inside, as the stars and the numb black of space, and all those prickly stars, disappearing overhead.

There were a few mismatched little ships hanging from tethers around the bay, like dead game birds, dangling from strings. And in a very short time they'd be hanging there too.

Then there was the loud clang and screech of a gantry striking their hull, and the yacht came to an awkward stop, tilted when they should have been plumb level with the cargo vessel's attitude, at least. It began to seem more and more like pirates, and not very skillful ones.

She'd sent a simple text message, relaying what they must have already known, the registry and course of the ship, off ahead to Vulcan, for safety's sake. Whether or not it got past the cargo ship, and any jamming equipment, was another question.

Then she tried to imagine what would happen next. T'Mara would come on board, demanding she return to Earth immediately, to prevent that great unnamed disaster—or (for all she knew) the great disaster forever to be named after her. Making her the queen, the destroying goddess, of some galactic ruins to be uncovered millions of years from now, by some other eager young explorer, she supposed. It made her feel strangely grand, all of a sudden, even in the belly of this beast.

And her pilot would be left here, she supposed—of no interest to T'Mara. Of course, this ship would be sold on the black market, and God only knew what would happen to him, her brief partner in crime.

There was another loud clang, outside the main hatch, and suddenly a big hand clamped down on her. She turned around with a start.

There, towering over her shoulder was a Vulcan, in robes, but not T'Mara. And, with a quick second glance, she saw the imposing figure with pointed ears and dark bowl-cut bangs was also sporting a rather familiar little moustache.

"Oh, for God's sake!" she groaned, for she was suddenly both relieved and horrified, in a way she didn't think was possible.

"We Vulcans don't believe in God," her pilot and boyfriend said, raising an eyebrow, and smiling in spite of his serious disguise.

"And," she added, "Vulcans also don't wear moustaches." She shook her head and watched as another gantry went swinging out from the bay wall, toward them. Seven stories up, the big hanger doors were closing slowly.

"It's my pride, you'll have to forgive me," he said, stroking his mustache. "Someday, when I'm old and fat and completely bald, this fuzzy little embellishment will grow to great and grand proportions, and make up for all my lost looks. Besides," he added, with twinkling eyes, "who knows but that the very holiest of Vulcans _don't _wear a mustache—their old women certainly do, don't they?"

Another clang echoed through the hull.

"I'll just go back… to the bathroom," Vina said, sliding past him in the doorway to the cockpit, and walking quickly down the long paneled corridor.

"But I don't understand why you can't see that this is absolutely brilliant!" He was only a few meters' behind.

"It won't work," she said, fiddling with the latch on the bathroom door.

"But it can't fail!" He took a few steps closer, in the dark corridor, with the soft recessed lights, speaking quietly, in case their captors were listening. "I happen to have a lot in common with Vulcans!"

"Like what?"

"Well… we're both trying to convince people of something that no rational person would ever believe—like religion, or sub-dimensional physics."

"Hey, my mother was a sub-dimensionalist." She pulled a mocking face and closed the door behind her, right before she clicked the lock.

But now what? She was just trapped in a tiny room with plumbing, a mirror, and various kinds of soap, until they blasted the door to photons.

She could hear the machinery of the outer airlock hatch opening up, and feel (or, at least, imagine) the slight "pop" of the air as the pressure equalized with the great cargo bay, or some extension tunnel they'd brought out to collect their prisoners.

And muffled talking: louder, then softer. Then, the unmistakable sound of heavy feet pounding down the corridor. In the distance, she wasn't so sure, but it sounded like her friend repeating a strange phrase, over and over:

"_If-lay ong-lay, e osper-pray! If-lay ong-lay, e osper-pray!" _It didn't sound like much of a diversion.

As quickly as she could, she pulled down the frame of the hypersonic showerhead, and twisted it out of its metal box enclosure, to where she could slowly pull out the limiter and readjust the wavelength up to the most disruptive vibration she could remember. Then she left it dangling, and turned to search under the vanity sink.

When she'd found something that looked like an extra-terrestrial first-aid kit, she sniffed in one bottle, and then another. But they were pounding on the bathroom door already.

Vina took (what seemed like) the most combustible of all the sterilizing fluids and sprayed it on the shower enclosure. The pounding on the door was almost unbearable, and it sounded like they wouldn't need a phaser at all to break through.

But she continued to hope for the best, and sprayed the last of the strange chemicals on the glass, like a graffiti artist. Reaching inside the shower, she flipped the power on and pulled both towels off the wall to hide under, before squeezing between the toilet and vanity.

The door wasn't giving in to their fists or their boots, but the hypersonic shower was still whining away, louder than she'd ever heard one do before. She thought she could hear the glass trembling, emitting a high-pitched squealing noise, as though expanding and contracting in odd ways, though the pirates were making enough of a racket to deafen any nearby passing ships.

Finally, for better or worse, the phaser blast began screaming through the door, and in a few seconds the energy blast began hitting the rattling shower glass.

They burst in a moment later.

In a fury of her own, exasperated that her plan hadn't work, and that the glass hadn't shattered outward, and the blast hadn't ignited the foaming, alien antiseptic the way she'd wanted, she threw the empty bottle out from under the towel, and it struck the thrumming enclosure, ringing for just a fraction of a second, with the strange music of the humming glass. There was a _whoosh! _as the hypersonic rays sent fragments of the shower door exploding outwards, and then howls from all the men who'd shoved themselves into the little space so swiftly.

She didn't look to see what happened next, and kept the towels over her head as she climbed across their bloodied work-suits. They were crouched on the tile, and their elbows were out, with hands covering their eyes and faces, and it was easy enough for her to get around. She glanced backward and, with great daring, halfway out the door, Vina reached down and grabbed an alien-looking blaster off the waistband of one of the groaning pirates.

Out in the hall, the mustachioed Vulcan was running up to the forward hatch. Thin, theatrical robes adorned with fake jewels billowing behind him, with one hand clamped down over his bowl-cut wig for security as he galloped out of sight. It seemed that neither one of them was going to wait around for T'Mara, the real Vulcan, to pinch them on the neck—they'd certainly wake up with a splitting headache, and she'd probably find herself locked in a cabin on her way back to Earth: back to complete and utter harmlessness.

Vina stepped out of the yacht, into a long airlock tube leading out of the bay. There was no sign of her con-man boyfriend, or anyone else for the moment. Holding the pirate's blaster up in both hands, she hurried forward to what she hoped was the control deck. She didn't plan on spending any more time in this monstrous vessel than she had to.

It was a long run, and as she ran along she was surprised the occasional portals to her left still showed the vast expanse of the cargo bay reaching out a hundred meters to the other side as she hurried by: dim lights revealing other pillaged ships, amidst the beams and pylons and loose tethers. Piles of trash were strewn all the way up and down the corridor, and she knew she'd also run past at least five monitor cameras along the way. Assuming any of them still worked—assuming T'Mara even needed them, to track her down.

But somehow they had good warp engines. It didn't quite make sense, though, if they were as run-down and neglected as the rest of this behemoth.

So she stopped. If she kept going toward the control deck, she'd instantly be out-numbered, and probably run into a lot more people coming and going before she ever got there. She tried to remember if she'd gone by any passageways off to the starboard engine, out there along the edge of the cloak-like wing. She'd spent so much time watching for scoundrels and Vulcans that she hadn't really noticed much else, beyond the ransack and the waste.

There was no time to wonder if the Universe was dotted with predator ships like this one, gobbling up innocent—and not so innocent—passersby, using them up and leaving the carcasses to rot—fearing all the while to expel the leftover garbage out into space, lest a trail of evidence be left behind: and so the pirates were swimming in the rot that filled the gangways, the remnants of their victims.

Finally, tracing backwards, she found a hatch down to the starboard engine room—it looked like it had once been a solid, immovable barrier, but now it merely leaned inward, broken through and dusty and smeared with… well, it didn't look like blood, exactly. But she didn't know whose blood had gone into getting the creaky old mess into space in the first place, decades ago, so she could hardly say what, exactly, was smeared there.

_So_, she thought, _I'm on a stolen cargo ship, filled with smaller stolen ships, whose innards have all been ripped out and half-examined, and cast off to fill the long tunnels all around_. She sighed, peering around at the end of the access tube, leaning down into the desolate engine room below. And climbing down took twice as long with a weapon in one hand.

She'd only been in one other really big engine room before, and she was pretty sure this one wasn't running as smoothly as it could. A warp nacelle, just beyond the thick outer wall, pulsed and groaned as they sped along—seven long windows in the bulkhead glowing red, and then dark-red, in some inscrutable sequence, off and on, as the matter and anti-matter wove together inside.

Now and then a yellow tendril would seem to go twisting from the stem to the stern of the engine, amidst the red, and Vina imagined she could feel the whole wing around her shudder, along with the digestion of it all, through at least one cracked crystal. It was like being inside a failing heart.

She set to work on the engine computer, a fairly simple console in the middle of the room, mated to an identical one across the width of the ship, controlling the port nacelle. After fiddling with the computer she was able to call up a flow chart, and various balance readings, which—obviously—were in a terrible state of neglect. It would have been much wiser to just abandon the whole thing rather than to fix it.

Then she imagined T'Mara creeping up on her, from behind. But when she turned to look, she was still alone. Primitive hand-scanners and cables and looted computer parts littered the dusty deck, but nothing more.

It was pretty obviously a lost cause, but she was able to extend the crystal life, for perhaps another few weeks at most: re-balancing the anti-matter pulse, and taking the weight almost entirely off that cracked element, which should have splintered weeks or months ago.

But why hadn't they come for her yet?

Then she realized, her new boyfriend must be standing before T'Mara and the pirate captain in the cockpit right now: spinning some ridiculous yarn or other.

"Well, you see," he began, "I happen to be in possession of something—well, some_one_, who could prove terribly valuable. Over time."

"Choose your words carefully, human," T'Mara said, in that peculiar, threatening way that real Vulcans have. The human had graciously removed his bowl-cut wig, as if doffing a hat, but the pointed ears still hung haphazardly on either side of his head: with the one on the right seeming to droop like a playful terrier's.

"Well," the human in Vulcan's robes resumed, just as earnestly as before, but turning his attention to the slightly less severe cargo-ship's pilot, who merely looked like he'd woken up in the gutter that morning. "It seems this Vulcan gentleman here has a little secret he'd rather you didn't know about. Isn't that right, Professor?"

The Vulcan stared remorselessly back, as if he knew every greedy little thought that jumbled around in their captive's head. Two pirate guards loomed menacingly behind the Earthman, as if they'd woken up in even worse gutters themselves.

The pirate captain shifted uncomfortably in his swivel chair, facing away from the stars and from the stained control panel behind him. He barely glanced at T'Mara, as if the mathematics of logic and Vulcan self-denial were a ridiculous waste of time. Then he turned back to the Earthman.

"Go on," the pirate/pilot said, as if he had somehow found his one last granule of patience, by the heaving a sigh.

"Well," the friendly prisoner smiled, "it seems the young lady I happen to be traveling with… has somehow got the power to change the entire fate of the great wide galaxy."

Now the pirate looked particularly annoyed. His chin landed in the palm of his hand, even as his elbow rested on the arm of the captain's chair.

"Technically," the pirate sighed, "each of us has the exact same power."

"Ah, but you see," the earnest-sounding Earthman smiled, waving a finger at his captors, "I'm quite sure that every other Vulcan, _except this one_, will do anything to let her go riding off to her own particular fate. A fate which, apparently, would have some devastating consequences—which the professor has sought to… shall we say, alleviate?"

"Yeah?"

"Yes, very much so! My guess is, he's done something particularly 'un-Vulcan,' and now they'll be more than happy—well, they'll be more than _satisfied_, shall we say—to sweep him under the rug!"

Now, the Earthman began blinking faster, as if he couldn't quite believe the pilot hadn't seen the dazzling possibilities yet. "So, if you can simply ransom this renegade professor here, who wants to stop her, the rest of the Vulcans might pay a very princely sum to put a stop to _him_. And to let the Universe regain its most… logical shape."

Now the pirates all seemed genuinely surprised, though the T'Mara still resembled some stern, medieval monk. But the pilot no longer regarded the Vulcan, and T'Mara could scarcely bring himself to turn to gauge the captain's reaction—perhaps wary of showing any sign of weakness against this outrageous human, and the scandalous peddling of Vulcan flesh.

"Sound like a bunch of bull to me," the pilot concluded, like a cagey poker player, after a long moment's reflection.

"I assure you, Captain," the Earthman smiled, his voice quavering with delight, "it's anything but that. It's exactly the reason why he insisted you stop us, just now, precisely when we changed our own course toward Vulcan." His brown eyes became particularly twinkly now, as he concluded his bargain, because he could see he'd guessed correctly.

"So, tell me: why don't we continue on in that direction and see just how much they'd be willing to pay, to prevent the professor here from changing the future?"

Then, to inadvertently seal the deal, T'Mara made the awful mistake of merely continuing to glower at the human prisoner, as if he were above the discussion entirely.

A few seconds later, at the captain's command, the roles were reversed and T'Mara himself was clapped in irons, to be hauled away: baffled by the sudden inspiration of a scurrilous group of non-Vulcans, with all their unexpected plotting and desire.

"Have a seat, there, Mr. Smith," the captain said to the jovial Earthman, indicating the co-pilot's chair of the great pirate vessel. They watched those jeweled robes sway out of sight between the guards, and both men reached into their pockets to produce a flask from each of their jackets. They laughed at their mutual inspiration to drink a little toast.

**Chapter Eleven **

**Captain's Log: Stardate 3824.15 **_We are beaming down to the large moon orbiting a gas giant in the unexplored system, HJL-971. It is our belief that one of the keepers, loosed during Vina's escape, has reached this world ahead of us. We are leaving Dr. Orwell on board the _Enterprise_, until we determine the extent of the contamination._

"You'd almost think you were back on Earth," Dr. McCoy sighed, breathing the cool, fresh air, under a bright blue sky.

"Except the 'sky' is really just an exceptionally large gas giant overhead," Jim Kirk, squinted upward. He was a little less impressed with the illusion, glancing instead at the black ring of deep space that barely surrounded the vast, imposing mother planet, down around the horizon.

He rubbed the back of his neck, as if that black, inside-out eclipse that hugged the tree-lined mountains might reach up and devour the friendly glowing blue above. But the white clouds streaming across the greater world's billowing face completed the illusion of a concave sky, almost perfectly.

"And, we are currently on the 'night-side' of its sun—" Spock added, as he scrolled through readings on his tricorder. "When we do revolve into daytime here, it will actually be much darker, and colder, than this bright 'night.'"

"A mere technicality, sir," McCoy smiled, impervious to the science officer's explanations, on a world where day was night… and the other way around. The doctor took a few steps out of the beaming formation and, gradually, so did the others.

"Captain," one of the lieutenants spoke up, from behind: "over there."

It was Brady, one of the science officers, looking up from her tricorder to a distant gap in the mountains of the moon: where the blackness of space was clearly visible through the geological crack in the horizon. A twinkling, winding river seemed to pour out of that darkness, as if it carried the stars from between those peaks. The flowing water curved toward them, and then beyond: toward the… east?

Then he saw it, or the first glimmer, anyway: an object coming down-river, between the split in the mountain range, out of the faraway blackness. Something bright.

"What is it?"

All the other members of the landing party held their tricorders up, like rectangular binoculars, as if to inspect a rare bird—though Brady now swept hers in the opposite direction, out of an abundance of caution.

"It appears to be," Spock said, expressing the faintest amusement, or surprise, "the local equivalent of a rather large old Earth riverboat."

"A what?" McCoy turned to protest, even as his right arm held out his own tricorder.

And with every minute that passed, it grew plainer: a large, floating white structure, with decks stacked up on top of a shallow raft-like structure and, for propulsion, a quaint series of mechanical paddles out ahead of the prow. Charming wooden rails and spindles went round every deck, as if to protect gracious ladies from falling into the water.

And yet, it was also alien to the equally massive, barrel-like sternwheelers that once churned along the great rivers of Earth, along the glowing banks. And in another minute or two, they could see a boxy, feathery conglomeration of airplane wings like those of the Wright brothers, out back: beating the air graciously, to push the vessel forward on curving waters.

"Illusion?" Kirk's tone was hopeful, as the actual sight of something that fanciful would prove him mad at last; after all they'd been through.

"Negative," Spock said, with complete assurance.

"Captain, look!" It was Lieutenant Atangze, the tall, gentle Nigerian, seeming equally astonished and bemused, as he swept his tricorder away from the great approaching riverboat.

And all around, on both sides of the river, they could see humanoid bipeds were emerging from the ground, from rabbit holes, hurrying toward the riverbanks.

"Come on," Kirk said, still unwilling to believe his own eyes, but marching toward the nearest bend in the bank.

Great trees spread around on this side of the river, with twisted roots that seemed to sew the soil together, and branches with furry boughs of tiny, crystalline leaves of darker blue, that glowed beneath the bright false sky above.

"They live underground," Kirk said, watching as more and more humanoids popped out of hidey holes all around, hurrying toward the same destination as they were, "and yet," he added, "the tidal forces of the mother planet must make for geological instability."

"Past experience is only a guide, of course," Spock said diplomatically, as they watched more and more humanoids emerging from their holes. "It may be these tree-like organisms, with their obviously aggressive root structures, can reduce some of the surface churning, in the event of a seismic quake."

"Otherwise," McCoy said, as they marched along toward the river, "this whole world would be turning itself inside-out, like the inner-ring moons of most any other gas giant."

"We haven't gathered enough deep tectonic data, yet, to know, Doctor," Spock argued, politely. His gaze swept across the great river, like a divide between lush forest and unforgiving desert, and even though there weren't any trees across the river, on the other side—the terrain there still seemed smooth and untroubled.

But one of the strangest pieces of data, that great white riverboat, was clearly visible now: sweeping into view on the last big curve of the waterway, before it gradually approached them directly. Kirk could finally see something like sets of biplane wings stacked-up back there, in a gargantuan crisscross arrangement: all the canvas-like wings flapping in the breeze.

Furry, speckled humanoids by the dozens had lined the banks, shaking upraised arms, beating the air enthusiastically, and tilting their heads to the blue sky that bulged down from above. On the other side, they seemed even louder, and more energetic.

They began to hear pounding music, as the riverboat sailed closer—grand and portentous, a thrashing of tuned sticks against hollow tubes of all different sizes, producing a strangely magnificent cacophony, a primal chaos that echoed in the waving of the furry spotted arms that shook all along the river, on both sides.

Down along the water, as the great white boat approached, Jim Kirk could see a sort of sideways "fish-mouth" series of bellows operating below the prow of the structure, where the water rushed in—and it seemed to him these fish-mouthed bellows, sweeping open and closed, were swallowing up dark water as the vessel moved forward, possibly operating in the same rhythm as the delicate lattice-work of wind-sails back at stern.

He tried to imagine the bizarre interplay of the left-and-right motion of rudder-like tongues out in the front, opening and closing, and the flapping horizontal and vertical wings out back, all working together, slowly producing forward momentum, but it still seemed so unreal: did the wind out back churn the gentle, gasping motion in front? Or did the water intakes somehow force the sails out back to "paddle" the air as they floated across this exotic moon?

"Captain," Spock said. The Vulcan had been watching Kirk for just a moment, as the human (who rose up through the ranks from engineering) seemed mesmerized by the approaching contraption, and perhaps the rhythmic demonstrations all around.

The science officer held up his own tricorder for him to look into. On the screen was a magnified version of what floated toward them.

"Well," Kirk sighed, "at least it's the 'direct approach' this time…" But he didn't sound very happy about it.

And, indeed, there on the hand-held scanner was the image of a little crowd of cat-like humanoids up on the top balcony of the grand riverboat: furry natives swaying to the music of the sticks and barrels, all around a little figure that sat on a carved chair in their midst, at the very center of that upper deck. It was the keeper they'd come to find, out there fearlessly in the open—seeming to come after them, for a change.

"What do you make of that," McCoy wondered, looking over Kirk's shoulder, at the magnified image.

"They're… not afraid of us, anymore," Kirk said, not knowing if he should be impressed or dismayed.

The frail, hairless humanoid sat motionless as the great riverboat sailed toward them, his cranium swaying in rhythm to the churning of the vessel, and the swagger of its sails at the rear. His pale blue robes had been overlaid with swaths of crimson fabric, and an ornate tapestry lay across his lap, as if he were some revered village elder now. Kirk could have been mistaken, but he thought he saw a trace of that haughty little smile on its face, as the keeper seemed to spot the landing party, still barely a kilometer away. All along the riverbanks, and on the boat, furry spotted humanoids waved and howled in a frenzy.

"Excuse me," Kirk said, as they reached the crowd along the forested-side of the riverbank. "What is that, approaching on the boat?" (His words went into Spock's tricorder, and a series of wheezing coughs seemed to emerge, based on everything the scanner had picked up around them already.)

"It is their… god," one of the smaller, furry humanoids said, when the words had come out the tricorder again. And the voice that came out was distinctly female.

"Whose god, madam?" Spock spoke up immediately.

"The people of the north. They bring war, in his name."

"I see," Kirk nodded, though of course he didn't really. "I'm Captain James T. Kirk, of the—"

"Of the Starship _Enterprise_, yes, we were told," the furry person, like a standing leopardess, said quietly. But she never took her eyes off the grand, approaching boat, as if it heralded some greater, more dreaded arrival. They could plainly see the musicians, all around the upper decks, beating their stylized war drums. And every creature, on each side of the river, was fixed on the vessel.

A great new cry, a welcoming shriek, began to grow across the north.

"Captain, clearly we are being challenged to involve ourselves in a manufactured conflict of some sort," Spock said, very quietly, one hand over the translator on the scanner.

"Yes, Mr. Spock, I can see," Kirk sighed, also very quietly. He turned back to the furry being.

"How long," the captain said, struggling for the words, "have they worshipped this god?"

"They say, for many years," the southerner said. "Though we have only heard of it quite recently. They say, many years," she repeated, as if in disbelief.

Kirk nodded. "And has this god brought them many blessings?"

"Only the blessings of hatred, and condemnation," the furry being said. But its wheezes and coughs seemed to go into the translator with something like dismay. "Look there," she added, gesturing with one, long graceful forepaw: "there were many trees on both sides of the river, till recently. They have torn them all up."

"Because of their god?" There was an awkward pause while she surveyed the wasteland across the water.

"It told them the trees were strangling the spirit of the land. And commanded them to release the spirit, so our world might ascend into Heaven."

At this, both Kirk and Spock looked up, warily. The great blue planet loomed down like a roof that was about to cave in.

"But," Kirk asked, carefully, reluctantly, "don't they know… that's just another planet, up there?"

"Everyone knows it—but they have chosen to forget." Now, she looked up, from examining the tricorder in the first officer's hands. The creature had been watching as the officers' strange words went in, and familiar hissing and growls came out.

"May I ask," Spock said, after they'd recovered their own inquisitive natures once again, "if there have been any notable consequences, following the removal of the trees in the north?"

"The land trembles, of course," the furry being said, and Kirk thought he could see some kind of fearful scowl in her feline expression, a narrowing of the eyes, and a fluttering of her huntress' nostrils, as if she were regarding some great approaching evil.

The riverboat was now clearly in sight, along with the northern god on its throne. And for the first time, in a lull between the frenzied songs, they could hear the sails fluttering like wings of locusts.

"What is your name," Kirk asked, finally.

"B'lisbeh," the creature nodded, before turning sadly to watch the showboat and the northerners again, in their wild foreign ecstasy. He turned back as well, to the grand entrance of madness and false salvation. But the name of their alien contact sounded to him like the regal "Elizabeth." And that's how he would always think of her later.

"How did you know of our coming?" He had to repeat the question, as the pounding music had started up again, with the rising of the keeper from his throne.

"Their god told them, and they told us."

"I see," Kirk said, glancing guardedly at Spock.

"And what is the basis," the chief science officer asked, over the pounding music, "for this war you say they bring?"

"Purification," the tricorder seemed to reply, very flatly, after a particularly angry snarl from B'lisbeh.

Spock merely nodded, though his brow furrowed with a philosophical kind of Vulcan dismay, as if anything in the Universe, or any _biological_ thing, could ever truly be purified.

"Did you feel that," B'lisbeh asked, turning sharply back to Kirk.

"No," the starship captain confessed, being utterly consumed by the sight of the great riverboat, and the pounding music, as it coasted to a mooring point along the northern bank. The keeper disappeared amidst a coterie of furry followers, and a huge queue formed out of the beings that lined the other side, to greet it at the shore.

"Seismic quake," Lt. Brady said, from behind the two senior officers. "Three point two, Captain."

He could plainly see the great wings along the back of the ship now, like fluttering panels of onionskin glued to long ribs of dark bamboo. Their constant sweeping back and forth had finally ceased, along with the sideways rowing out in front, as eager crews on shore tied the craft up to the north banks.

Kirk turned and tried to analyze B'lisbeh's posture and expression—and, leopard-like, she seemed to reveal a feral unease, or a dislike, through squinting, luminous eyes.

And as they watched, the keeper left the boat and emerged onto the bank on the other side, amidst much bowing and howling from its followers. A wagon, a sort of cross between a large, flat Conestoga and a rickshaw, was drawn up: pulled by six more feline humanoids. Their keeper was hoisted aloft, and carried away on the wagon, led by the musicians and their sticks and barrels, without acknowledging the Starfleet officers at all. Many of the northerners hurried off behind the wagon, too: beating their forepaws in the air, in rhythm to the music: as if challenging Heaven to come down at once, rather than rising up to it, themselves.

But, if anything, the bulging-down bright blue sky was only rolling away to the left, and the dizzying black void spread upward from the east. Soon it would be another dark day, and the blue crystalline trees that remained behind them already seemed to coil inward, till their limbs wrapped against the trunks like huge asparagus stalks against the cold to come. Otherwise, stillness lay to the south, where furry humanoids watched the receding northerners, till they simply went back into their holes below the trees, with barely a word spoken between them. And so the landing party was left, with B'lisbeh, to contemplate the empty riverboat that rocked on the far edge. And as the last of the southerners disappeared into their holes, Jim Kirk was reminded of prairie dogs, sniffing the air for danger.

"Spock, go follow—take Atangze with you," Kirk said, watching the joyous crowd heading far off into the distance. And, without hesitation, the Vulcan and the Nigerian crossed up over the rise, down to the river, and waded in: holding their tricorders up above the rushing water. In a moment, they were up to their shoulders, bouncing east along with the current, but making gradual progress across the water, to the other side. For a while, though, all that could be seen of them were their heads, and one arm each, keeping their scanners high and dry.

"Good thing they're both tall," McCoy said, watching the two men slowly emerging again, sixty or seventy meters downstream. Somewhere at mid-point, Spock had grabbed Atangze's free hand and, in the end, they dragged each other up through the mud the rest of the way. Instantly, Spock began running to catch up with the distant mob, and Atangze followed suit, after pausing just a moment to catch his breath.

"You go… underground again, when you're on the far side," Kirk said quietly. "The far side of the mother planet," he added.

"Yes, for warmth," came the translation from Brady's tricorder, as she marched along on the other side of the captain. McCoy and Hoblitzel, the security man, followed along behind, stepping over gnarled roots and around the occasional rabbit hole.

"This planet is warmed by the geology," Brady said, looking at the readings on her screen, "the tidal forces of the gas giant, pulling from one side, and then the other, turn the moon's core into a kind of giant piston engine."

"Yes, though the day is quite cold. I am not familiar with your other words," B'lisbeh said, still on the lookout for some small animal or other, despite the racket the humans were making. "Science has fallen out of favor on this world," she added, with a series of bemused snorts and growls. "But perhaps you will explain to me, this 'piston-Asian.'"

"I can tell you all about pistons. And… cylinders too," Kirk volunteered, with a charming smile. Behind him, McCoy only shook his head quietly.

"And I can tell _you_," the doctor mumbled, over the captain's shoulder, "all about cat-scratch fever."

"You can't just approach them directly," Atangze said, in disbelief, as they caught sight of the northerners again, around a rocky hillside.

"Undoubtedly, Lieutenant," Spock said, without taking his eyes off the crowd of worshippers below, "their keeper is already well aware of our presence."

"I was afraid you were going to say that, Mr. Spock," Atangze nodded.

"I do not wish to endanger either of us," Spock went on, assuming the lieutenant was making a little "jest," "but it might be wise for you to surrender your phaser to me, as we seek to confront this particular enemy."

After only the briefest of pauses, Atangze plucked his phaser off his belt, and handed it to the senior officer.

"That's not a problem, sir," he nodded, "I saw what happened over Rigel."

And, as far as either man knew, they would just proceed onward, gathering information on the northerners, and their ways—being careful, at the same time, to keep an open means of escape.

"What do you call yourselves?" B'lisbeh asked, as they settled in underground, for the cold day to come.

"We represent the United Federation of Planets, travelling on the Starship _Enterprise_."

B'lisbeh stared back as if this was, perhaps, bad news.

"Yes, we know of the ship," she nodded. "It harbors—" and here, Brady's tricorder let them down, as their hostess emitted only a painful-sounding guttural growl.

"I'm sorry, I didn't get that," Kirk said, after exchanging glances with McCoy.

"The opposite of their god," B'lisbeh said, obviously referring to the northerners again.

"The anti-god?" McCoy asked, incredulously.

"So they say." But B'lisbeh seemed bored, or disdainful of the topic.

Now it was Kirk and McCoy who stared back, a bit overwhelmed.

"Well," the doctor sighed, "that's a twist. One arrives and claims he's god, and the next one shows up a while later, to play the devil."

"The two keepers conspire together, to draw this world into chaos and… destruction," Kirk said, rubbing the side of his face.

"Why—excuse me for interrupting," Brady said, at last. "But, why do they worship that Talosian?"

The phrase didn't mean anything to B'lisbeh, and Kirk elaborated.

"The being that arrived on the riverboat—with the very large head."

"Ah, that is what you call him," B'lisbeh nodded, as if something hadn't quite fit together in the whole story till now. "He was not present, not to us anyway, at first, but there was great agitation and activity north of the river, in anticipation of his coming. The trees, as you have seen, are gone. The land trembles," she added, glancing up warily at the earth roof over their heads, in the underground chamber. "All the time they are singing and dancing, and have been burning the wood from their trees in sacrifice to it. And now he has finally come."

"But has there been any miracle?" Brady asked, hoping the tricorder wouldn't explode in a burst of faithlessness in her very hands, faced with translating a concept out of legend.

B'lisbeh squinted at the junior science officer, tilting her flat head, and her eyes glowed in the near dark. The light from Brady's tricorder provided a faint illumination, and it appeared that there was a tunnel off behind their hostess that went twisting downward, perhaps to another den. Sturdy roots of trees laced all around them, in the walls of the underground lair, forming small crypts and shadows, where small lights or candles danced. Up above, Hoblitzel had crammed himself in the trapdoor to the surface, peering outside occasionally.

"Anything that defied scientific explanation?" Kirk clarified.

"You have come, bearing the… anti-god. As was predicted." There was an awkward pause.

"Well, I suppose religions have been founded on less," McCoy said, quietly.

At that all of them fell into silence, pondering the strategy of their enemy.

"So," Kirk tried to encapsulate, "if we don't keep the… keeper up on the ship, we're somehow preventing the northerners' final conflict of good and evil."

"And if we do bring it down," McCoy said, in seeming disbelief, "we're challenging their god—which we'd have to do, anyway, to free these people."

"Damned if we do, and… damned if we don't," the captain concluded. He thought for a minute.

"Outside temperature, minus fourteen now, Captain," Hoblitzel said, sticking his head down, his face lit dimly.

"Well, there's nothing we can do about it tonight—" Kirk said quietly. "I mean, 'today.' Let's try and get some sleep."

But he noticed B'lisbeh staring thoughtfully at him, and he tried to edge closer to her.

"When, exactly, did you become aware of the northern god?"

"I am not sure," she answered, softly, through one of the tricorders. "It is a matter of such frustration that I have partially blocked it out of my mind."

"I don't blame you," he nodded, glancing at her long, silky arms, like rays of sun broken through trees, on a soft forest floor.

"It must have been five—or possibly six—days ago, with a great rush of activity. They worked day and even into the night to remove the trees from their side of the river. And, since then, we are shaken."

"The tidal forces," Kirk said, "they'll tear the surface apart. Surely they must have known this."

"They were over-taken by a madness," B'lisbeh whispered, into the tricorder. "If they didn't destroy their land, it would displease their new god. If they did destroy it, it would hasten their… going up to the sky."

Kirk nodded and stared at her for a moment. Her brow softened as she looked back, and she stood up on her hindquarters. "Come, I show you the lower dens."

He followed, as the others slept.

"What in blazes happened to you?" McCoy whispered in the dark, squinting as Kirk shook him awake. It was about an hour later.

The captain had one rough series of parallel scars along his left temple, and his shirt was torn down the front, revealing another swipe of some kind of claws.

"Rough night," he answered, as McCoy twisted around to go searching through his medi-kit.

"You mean 'day,'" the doctor said, producing a palm-sized metallic device.

"Outside temperature warming, Captain, up to near freezing," Hoblitzel said, still up in the crawl-way to the surface.

"We go out soon," Kirk nodded, as McCoy sprayed his scratches and scrapes.

"I thought you were supposed to pick them up by the scruff of the neck," McCoy grumbled, as he finished applying the treatment.

"Shows what you know about women," Kirk said, just as quietly, to avoid waking Lieutenant Brady.

"I only know what I've read in your medical history, Captain."

"Well, that's more than the average man," Kirk allowed, trying to sound nonchalant.

He climbed up to join the security officer in the crawlspace to the surface, and opened his communicator to check back with the ship.

"Kirk to _Enterprise_." He waited. "Kirk to _Enterprise_." Then Hoblitzel tried his own communicator, and each of them, in turn: McCoy and then, as she'd woken up by now, Brady as well. All the communicators, dead.

21

21

_By Richard T. Green_


	6. Chapters 12 and 13

_Vina Escaped II: Green Blood, Red Blood_

**Chapter Twelve **

Scotty and Nurse Chapel stood over the seemingly harmless body of their captive keeper, up on board the _Enterprise_.

"Aye, I know what Mr. Spock said, and I know what the doctor said. Just take it down into a deeper hibernation, Nurse. I canna have the captain and the rest down on that world, out of touch, with another one of them roaming around doing whatever brand of devil's work they please."

There was an awkward pause, but finally Christine Chapel nodded—unused to taking medical advice from the chief engineer, though she heard nothing but good sense in it.

The tall blond in the pale blue uniform bent over the head of the keeper's bed, and began altering the brainwave dampeners as delicately as she could. Scotty watched, his sharp eyes going up and down, from the life readings overhead, to the great pulsing skull that had brought them to the edge of destruction, and seemed sure to do so again.

In spite of his own disbelief, Montgomery Scott watched as the black shimmering oval began to form again, and his eyes darted right, toward Vina Orwell, for some kind of understanding. Nurse Chapel stumbled backwards, and he caught her before she tumbled to the deck.

"Whoa, lassie," he said, backing her out of the wardroom as quickly as possible, by the elbows.

And then, defying any scientific explanation, Vina's whole body grew to ten-times its normal size, like a swelling sponge, a few beds from the keeper: becoming like a horrid giant wasp, looming down on the writhing Talosian and over the swirling black and gleaming tornado that twisted around its uneasy, sleeping form.

Scotty smacked the comm-link on the wall, out in the office.

"Security to sickbay, on the double," he said, as plain as day.

"_On our way." _

But it was clearly going to be too late, and Vina was literally tearing the body of the keeper to bits, all six of her new, insect-like arms plunging into its flesh over and over again. Her face, and her whole body, seemed bloated and huge like a larvae, glistening as she scowled down, and Nurse Chapel went scurrying for a tray of hypos against the far wall in the wardroom.

By the time she was approaching the giant Vina with the hypo, the security men burst in, five of them in red shirts like Scotty's, phasers drawn in a we-mean-business-way.

The first security officer held out his arm, though, as Nurse Chapel reached upward, searching for a place to make the injection. Vina was almost unrecognizable now, the whole shivering mass of her thorax stretching across two and a half beds, before rising up and plunging down those sword-like appendages into her long-time torturer. And, one by one, Chapel injected each of the red-shirts with the same anti-psychotic, before they burst into the wardroom.

When it became too cold to watch the northerners under the black sky, Spock and Atangze searched around and found an empty rabbit-hole in the desert, at the foot of the hill where they'd hidden. On the other side, the worshippers surrounded their keeper, and a blazing bonfire. And, even beneath the ground, the two fleet officers could still hear the chanting of the leopard people, like a steady snarling winter wind.

Later, in the near darkness, the two men awoke to another seismic quake.

"Mr. Spock!" Atangze said, as if to wake the Vulcan.

"Take your thermal blanket and go to the surface," the science officer said, equally loud, as bits of soil rained down. It looked like extreme night, and the ground was still shaking when they emerged under the host of stars, wrapped in blankets that had been folded tiny in their pockets.

"That was a big one," Atangze said quietly.

"Yes, I would estimate approximately five point seven." Spock flipped his tricorder open and pressed the screen here and there. "My probe of the moon's interior shows the quake was also centered less than fifteen kilometers beneath the surface."

"It's amazing life could develop here in the first place," Atangze said, wrapping his blanket tighter.

"A felicitous combination of warming qualities, from within and without, and the obvious protective influence of the blue trees," the Vulcan nodded. His own breath blew barely any steam in the cold, as his ancestors were desert people, and accustomed to maintaining their interior moisture levels.

"Is there any other data from the geological probe," Atangze asked, peering over Spock's shoulder.

"Yes," the first officer nodded, "however, it is not encouraging." He pointed an orange finger at the little screen on the upper right of the tricorder. "As you see, the mantle and core are highly integrated, in terms of geological structure."

"That means," Atangze grimaced, "whatever happens far down in the center, happens out here, too."

"Indeed. And the loss of those natural inhibitors, the trees, may make it more pronounced."

And then the moon's surface trembled again, with the grumbling of rocks and the hiss of sands. The human looked mildly horrified, and the Vulcan, as if he were patiently counting up the Richter scale once more, despite being shoved this way and that.

"Why would it quake," Atangze wondered, once things had quieted down again, "when the mother world is on the other side? I mean, I understand both worlds are still in the same proximity, but the deforestation is all on this side, isn't it?"

"Data are incomplete," Spock said, already reading his tricorder again. The light from the screen made his face glow, as if disembodied in the darkness. But he could see the "piston engine" effect of the core, in the tricorder animation: tremendous bulges of molten rock shoving this way and that, deep below the moon's surface. He made a quick mental calculation before speaking again: "It may be a natural re-coil effect."

"Is the instability in any danger of changing the orbit?" Atangze was looking closely as well, the natural oil of his dark face glowing slightly, before the little screen. And, at that question, both men were momentarily left to ponder the strange prophesy of 'ascending into Heaven.'

Spock only nodded, agreeing on the importance of the question. He glanced around once, before he tapped through different screens, just out of sight of the northern tribe. They could still hear the chanting songs on the other side of the hill, but each was loath to go back under ground again, under the circumstances.

Then Spock looked up, and Atangze's glance naturally followed the Vulcan's.

"What is it?" the human whispered, pulling his survival blanket up over his head.

"Entangled particle reading," Spock muttered, nodding toward the other side of the hill. Clearly, someone was about to beam down, in the midst of the apocalyptic cult. They began walking around to peer over the lower end of the rise, toward the bonfire.

"Where did she go?" Nurse Chapel said, as one of the security guards helped her up off the deck in the wardroom on board the _Enterprise_. Mr. Scott was nowhere to be found, either.

And the keeper, or what wretched, inside-out mess was left of him, was smeared around on its bed, the brainwave dampeners smashed, and blood and bones and tendrils of dripping organs were left hanging down from the padding. Clearly, Vina did not need that one any longer.

Two of the red-shirts ran up to the bridge, brandishing their weapons, and two more ran down to the transporter room, while the fifth security man filed a quick report on the sickbay computer.

When the two security men burst in to the transporter room, they found Montgomery Scott standing behind the big control console, seemingly lost in a moment of introspection. He turned to them with a look of irascible Scottish hauteur.

"What'll ye be burstin' in like that for, laddies?"

"Where is the female patient, sir?" one of the men said, as they stood in the doorway, looking back and forth, from the senior officer to the empty beaming chamber.

"I haven't got the slightest idea! I just sent the captain down, on his orders, on his proper authority, down to—" And then he seemed to snap out of it, reviewing what he'd just said, and what he'd known from earlier that day, hours before, when the captain and landing party had already beamed down. A momentary look of the lowliest humility blanked-out his burst of self-righteousness. And that was replaced by a quiet, simmering rage at being made to look like a fool.

There was a polite little pause, as Scotty and the security men tried to decide what to do next.

"Request permission to go down after her," one of the guards said, prompting a little worried frown from the chief engineer.

"I don't know, lad," he said, "the only one qualified to deal with telepaths at all is Mr. Spock, and he's down there with the captain. And I couldn'a trust these instruments on my own, not after what just happened. After a couple of years with Captain Pike, she probably knows as much about this transporter as I do."

"We could take a shuttle," the other guard volunteered.

"Did they gi' ye a death-wish along with yer damned tunic, lad? One of those fellows down there, with the giant head, he could send ye crashin' into our own landin' party without a second thought. Is that what ye want now?"

So, these three undeniably brave, resourceful people were stuck standing there, variously clenching their fists or trying to relax their shoulders or shifting back and forth like baited cobras, trying to decide what to do next.

The great insect monster, with her glowing underbelly, shimmered to life in the midst of another pounding song of war-drums, as the blue sky rose along the horizon, like an icy dome. The musicians faltered and their rhythms became scattered, as the northerners began to run for cover, away from the towering beast over the fire.

And in the rush of leopards racing off toward the river again, Spock and Atangze finally emerged from the other side of the hill: their pocket blankets making them anonymous to the crowd loping the other way.

Then the moon's surface began to shake again, and all the racing, feline-humanoids seemed to stagger in formation and dust, and spun-out together like a crowded field of comet-racers. They flew nearly sideways to a skittering stop, before raising themselves up to shake off the dirt from their fur, from their own barren landscape.

Black lightning bolts, like those bursts of non-light in the sickbay vortex, flashed back and forth between the insect-monster and the keeper, on the other side of the bonfire: tendrils of psychic energy twisting against the glowing mother planet, as it returned to spread across the east horizon. Neither of the former residents of Talos IV seemed to be giving any ground, though, and the keeper gradually enlarged his appearance, to equal the size of Vina's—making the massive warming fire look more like a quaint, camp-side convenience by comparison. Neither titanic being seemed to move, against the backdrop of the rising mother world, but the fire danced between them, like the favor of scornful gods.

Spock and Atangze were thrown against the hill, where they tried to wait-out the shaking ground, reading from the tricorders that jumped up and down in their hands. Spock finally rose up, staggering toward the two warring figures and those whipping dark tendrils of energy.

Finally, the great insect that had been Vina swept forward—into the flames. And there, her disguise exploded upward in sheets of fire, and she was revealed as her self again, though still fifteen meters high: holding youthful arms above her head as fire billowed from every inch of her body. She was a towering, horrifying beauty, the fire spreading up like wings.

And instantly, Spock understood: she was taking on the form of the pre-apocalyptic telepaths of Talos IV, from 750,000 years ago, who sheathed themselves in mental energy like fire, to frighten off the non-telepaths who would nearly destroy them.

Fire leapt out of her mouth, into the face of her hated captor: just as it had from the forehead of one Talosian, into Spock's own mind, nearly six days ago: telepaths traveling through the mind of another telepath, back in time to warn the keeper's ancestors about their impending destruction. But, in spite of the warning into the past (their own shadow reflection, through the keeper in sickbay) Talos still was still not restored to a paradise of telepaths and non-telepaths.

Atangze had managed to stagger along behind the first officer, to near the edge of the light, to where the monsters' heads and arms lunged at one another: one of fire, and one of flesh.

Spock half-turned over his shoulder as if he had a sudden urge to explain why Vina had seemingly burst into flames, even as she tore at her opponent beneath the great blue eye on the horizon. The huge Neptune-like world was nearly half-up now, and a distant mountain seemed like part of a cat's eye pupil in the center, a long way away. The Vulcan spoke, as easily as if reading off a row of numbers:

"She is trying, I believe, to symbolically remind the Talosian of its own 'fiery' response to the oppression its forbearers suffered at the hands of an unsympathetic, non-telepathic majority."

"They must not have symbolism on their world, sir—I don't think it's having any effect," Atangze said as he ducked one of Vina's fiery arms, thundering through the air in another bid to blast the keeper's skull to bits. The keeper reached back and grabbed a great handful of sand, and threw it in her face. Momentarily, she was extinguished, before the flames enrobed her again.

The Nigerian tapped Spock on the shoulder and made a "pistol" gesture with his hand. The Vulcan nodded and drew one of the phasers he was carrying, up at the keeper. But when he fired, the green stun beam went right through the alien and its giant shimmering gown. The ray of light quickly disappeared out into space.

"There when it wants, but not when we want," Atangze summed it up.

"Yes, it is somewhat challenging," Spock admitted, pressing the phaser back on his hip. Shadows were clearly visible now, as the false blue sky loomed larger and larger. "Of course, they aren't really that tall," he added, rueful at being fooled into aiming too high. "For that matter, they might be a considerable distance away, and merely projecting their images back for some unknown reason."

"What do we do, sir?"

"The tremors are likely to continue, and possibly worsen, especially in this northern region, with the tidal effect of the mother world," the chief science officer said, as one of Vina's great arms went rushing overhead again. "I am considering a tactical retreat to the more stable southern banks."

"If you're looking, sir, I'd be more than happy to second _that_ motion."

"Try the ship again, Lieutenant," Spock said, beginning to walk away, in what looked like a wide circle around the two giants—as if he wasn't retreating at all, in fact. "Then alert the captain, we may be coming back shortly."

But when he was about fifteen meters away, the moon began to shake again, vibrating fast like a ringing bell, till the hillside rolled down in rocks and slides, and rough dirt poured down from above. Clouds of a faint, gold and brown color spread, as the titans swiped at each other.

Both men were in a sort of permanent crouching position now, like the giant keeper and Earth woman overhead, as everything around them seemed to be in a geological revolt.

Then, just as they'd broken into a run from the brutal illusion, they heard something like the deepest thunder, conducted all the way up into the roots of their teeth. They looked around, but could not stop for fear of falling, or of whatever new calamity that might now come upon them.

They saw it, over their shoulders: the mother planet itself had seemed to grow much larger, expanding even as it rose majestically—the opposite of every other dawning body in the known Universe, as it disengaged from the horizon. It seemed, as the glowing blue above expanded, they were indeed 'ascending to heaven.'

Spock wanted to stop and look, and check his tricorder to be certain. But either way, the great blue gas giant would still be there a few minutes from now, if they could just live to see it, from the other side of the river.

**Chapter Thirteen **

"They sure do want to talk," Captain Markowitz said, watching the comm-link on the pirate ship's control panel, as they made their way to Vulcan.

"Oh, the Vulcans are great talkers," the mustached gentleman smiled. Then he became comically quizzical: "You'd think I'd get along with them a lot better than I do."

"I only want to get along with their precious metals, their jewels, and any un-fractured dilithium crystals they just may happen to have lying around."

"I'm perfectly sure they will be more than willing to cooperate, Captain," his new partner winked, as they were indisputably on the verge of a great transaction, for whatever ransom they could claim for T'Mara. But instead of looking hopeful, Markowitz became sour, all of a sudden.

"Yeah, they've started a scan," the pirate captain said, resigned to the greater power of the Vulcans, and turning in his pilot's seat to watch as his computer panels began flickering in that odd hiccupping way, as if the machinery itself had suddenly become possessed, and was speaking in incomprehensible tongues.

"I wouldn't worry, not for a moment, Captain," the smiling man said. "We've nothing to hide, and they've no idea we've put T'Mara in the brig, for that matter, either."

"Unless they can read each other's minds," Markowitz said, growing testy. "I've heard all kinds of stories about some invisible web that ties them all together."

Both humans stared intently out the forward portals, as Vulcan slowly swam into view. Finally, the captain spoke again.

"Why don't we ransom them both, the Vulcan and the girl? Double our money!"

There was only the slightest pause as the charming, smiling man readjusted to the next step in all scheming, the escalation of ambitions.

"Now, let's not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? Their interest in the girl is apt to be negligible, considering they are notoriously neutral about other worlds and other races. Seems to me," he smiled, from the co-pilot's chair, "the greatest threat to everything they claim to believe, is in the Vulcan professor, himself!"

"Yeah, well," Markowitz looked nervously about, "how much do you think we can claim for just him?"

"Well," Vina's wicked boyfriend smiled, "I suppose the going-rate for Vulcans must be at least twice the rate for humans, if that's any consolation—so, something on the order of a hundred-fifty-thousand credits?"

"Say, that's not bad…"

"Not at all! And we might even be able to gin it up a bit from there. If we're cagey about it."

"Really?" Markowitz had a natural suspicion in his voice and expression, as if any good thing to come his way might smash into a black hole and just disappear forever, without any warning at all.

"You just leave that to me, Captain…"

"Do you want 'em now?"

"Err, well," the gentleman with the mustache stretched and hugged himself, "yes, absolutely, why not?"

In a minute or so, a dispassionate Vulcan woman appeared on the control panel screen. And though her own gaze was down toward the buttons and readouts, she somehow seemed faintly superior, as if gazing down at them from a point far above.

"Yes, we'd like to speak to someone in charge of the field of… what you might call… time enforcement," the charming Earthman said, undeterred by her seeming disdain.

"There is no such field of enforcement," she replied, instantly.

"Ah, well," he said, suddenly looking unaccountably exuberant, "this will come as a great relief to Professor T'Mara, late of Starfleet Academy, won't it, then. We've been forced to take him prisoner on our brave little ship, purely out of concern for his activities, of course. Regarding a certain time experiment he was involved in."

The Vulcan woman blinked, serenely, as if she were merely observing some compressed visual of a field of flowers: blooming and dying, in an endless cycle of life.

"We recommend you return the professor to Starfleet at once."

Now Captain Markowitz was becoming restless, shifting this way and that in the pilot's seat.

"Ah, well, you see," the charming Earthman said, with barely a moment's pause, "Starfleet really doesn't believe in this Vulcan 'magical traveling into the past' and all."

At this, her dark eyes narrowed as she finally began to realize what he was trying to say.

Then, as if confronted with a scientific result she hadn't anticipated, the Vulcan woman blinked and even reared-back in her chair before the camera. She cast a look of very discrete surprise off to one side, as if to a co-worker. And then she lowered her eyes downward, as if she were reading—or could it be that she was mourning over—something strangely unhappy?

_Obviously_, the mustached man concluded, she must have been reading from some notes or perhaps from a screen on a desk: because 'mournfulness' seemed so utterly out of the question for this supremely noncommittal race.

Finally she looked up again.

"We are aware of Professor T'Mara, and that he has recently been in contact with a small child, of partial Vulcan descent." She blinked once for emphasis there, the pirate and the charming man seemed to notice, quite distinctly. As if this might all be the nefarious work of some little boy or little girl, only _partly_ Vulcan, making Vulcan only tangentially to blame for wherever this all led.

"Are you in possession of a young Earth woman, as well?" The Vulcan woman might just as well have been Cleopatra, blithely commanding a servant to bring a different ribbon for her hair.

"Ah, you mean Dr. Orwell."

"No."

This caused a moment's panic in the mustached man. Who else could there be?

"Ah, well, we're not exactly aware of any other young ladies being involved, you see," the charming gentleman said, renewing his bargaining confidence, out of nowhere, and growing more and more charming by the syllable, just out of instinct—though it was an attitude of no importance to the young lady with the pointed ears, of course. There was suddenly something frightful about the whole thing to him: though in a most unexpected way, from the planet's sudden, lurid interest in some innocent Earth girl.

"We would be interested in the pair," she said, quietly but very firmly.

"Ah," the handsome, mustached man said, his whole body going through a little spasm of panic, which he covered gracefully with a hand through his wavy hair, and a squint that turned itself into a beatific smile once again. But, even to a Vulcan, that seemed strained now. She stared back skeptically.

"I can offer you a very good bargain on the older gentleman," he said, his voice rising, as if trying to recapture the interest of a fussy little baby.

"We would only be interested in the pair," the young Vulcan lady answered, as before.

Now Captain Markowitz was looking at his new partner in crime with open hostility, at the way that everything had suddenly become so ridiculously complicated.

"Ah," the mustached man said, looking around, working his hands open and closed as he went grasping for an idea, "you wouldn't happen to have a… picture of the girl, or any information leading to her whereabouts, would you?"

"We are informed she will play an instrumental role in the future disturbance of the dominant flow of time we have been working to strengthen and stabilize, to thereby guarantee the common good of the galaxy, on into the millennia. This human is currently seventeen years old, and presently known to be on Earth. And we would like her brought to us as quickly and quietly as possible."

At that, a picture of the young Amanda Grayson appeared on the screen, the teenager who would become Spock's mother in another ten years. But in the present day, on the control panel's screen, she looked intensely joyful and girlish: with an open smile and a timeless beauty.

Both men looked deeply uncomfortable, in contrast to the Earth girl's evident delight. Finally, the mustached gentleman managed to smile at the Vulcan woman, who was back on the screen. He began bargaining hard.

"Well, you know, it would be a terrible, terrible shame if Professor T'Mara got away, in the meantime, while we were traveling all the way back to Earth to capture this undeniably innocent young Earth girl, without any process of extradition at all!"

"Vulcan's highest authority respects your ability to conduct this matter competently, and in the strictest confidence. However, any violation of this confidence will result in the revocation of any remuneration."

"But I'm afraid we really must have—at least—some kind of partial payment on the old man!" The mustached fellow was growing more and more worried about his pirate commander, and obtaining some kind of reward for trusting him so far. For, clearly the captain's patience was growing short.

Nevertheless, the screen went blank. And Captain Markowitz drew a very deep, and very angry breath. His voice was quiet and husky.

"What am I supposed to do, kidnap some damn schoolgirl? From Earth?"

"Well, I'm sure it won't strictly be considered kidnapping," he wheedled, "I'm sure she's done nothing wrong, and no charges could possibly be brought against her on Vulcan, surely!"

"Boys, get up here," Markowitz snarled, into a microphone on the control board.

"But it's absurd," the mustached man tried to laugh, though nervously. "I'm sure they'd never harm a young lady. They must only want her for questioning!"

"No," Markowitz said, angrily. "There's something else. She's part of the future, somehow, and they mean to put a stop to something—to whatever it is the professor's cooked up here… in the past."

"Oh, you think too much about these things!"

"No—the Vulcans have it all figured out. _Always!_ Someone else has told them to grab the girl—back on Earth, no less—as an insurance policy… against the future. Against meddling in the past." Markowitz' voice grew louder now, as if he were about to go into a kind of violent hysterics, and his left hand, on the control panel, seemed to be reaching back and forth for some small object to throw at his unlucky partner. "She's going to do something, or cause something to happen in the future. I don't know what. But they know. And I know she hasn't done _nothing_ wrong."

"But you can't argue with a Vulcan! They never do anything without a sound reason!" The mustached man was growing extremely concerned, even as he calmly poo-poo'd the captain's sudden anguish.

"You said there'd be big money in that old man." Now Markowitz was speaking through gritted teeth, finally seeing this passenger in the co-pilot's seat as the source of all his problems, out of nowhere. And they could hear the other pirates clanging up the stairs below the cockpit. There was an expression of open hatred and a bitter sense of betrayal on his face.

"Now, now," the mustached man raised his trembling hands, "there's no need to be concerned, we'll just take that tiny little yacht back the way we came, back to dear old Earth, and I'm sure that in very short order—"

And, just like that, two crewmen came running up to the cockpit.

"Look, I promise you, on my word of honor—"

But by then, he was being shoved down the stairway to the lower decks, and making little shrieks of protest to the big angry pirates who herded him down to the brig, where T'Mara waited quietly.

Vina saw them go by, on the long march to the back of the ship, on the far side of that immense cargo bay: her new boyfriend looking disheveled and dispirited, as the crewmen pushed him along by the shoulders and out of sight. He looked so much like a schoolboy in trouble that she wondered if he'd already had much practice in the role.

As far as she could tell, both warp engines were in a similar state of neglect. But the mated computers in both engine rooms agreed that there wasn't anything that could be done outside of a major re-fit in a well-equipped space-dock. Which seemed highly amusing to her, under the circumstances. In spite of the fact that her own options were now severely limited.

She checked her pockets again, in her black trench coat, which reminded the young scientist that she still had that pirate's blaster from the altercation in the bathroom. Then she dug a little deeper to find that yellow memory plaque from T'Lan, too.

Somehow it was supposed to have gotten her off Earth in the first place. But she hadn't really been needed it after all. For that matter, she didn't know if she'd ever even see Earth again, or if she cared at all, anymore. But, not knowing whether the palm-sized plaque had any value or not, she decided to hang on to it—if only as the modern equivalent of a "letter of introduction" to the galaxy.

On a perverse notion, she set out after the pirates and her troublesome boyfriend, down the long gangway to what she assumed was the brig. Every so often she'd hide and wait behind an airlock frame, to let them get a little farther ahead. She could still hear them tromping through the piles of trash, even when they had slipped out of view.

But there was no fancy area cordoned-off for prisoners, and no sizzling force fields, just a taller-than-average bulkhead amidst the ransacked plunder. T'Mara was already tied up there, to a metal girder, and now Vina's boyfriend was being trussed up in a similar fashion, a few meters' to T'Mara's left. Once the pirates had trudged out of sight, back up to the cockpit, the mustached man sat down on his pipe, looking as comfortable as ever. T'Mara seemed equally undisturbed by his plight. And Vina watched for a moment, just around the corner.

"Well, obviously," the mustached man began with a happy kind of awkwardness, "you don't expect me to apologize, but I certainly hope this won't put a crimp in our otherwise sterling relationship, Professor."

The Vulcan merely stared forward, as if either he or the human would simply die of old age in a matter of decades, and then he'd be left in peace.

"But you see," the human explained, as if whimsical, introspective monologs were all the rage, "someone like me just has to get along on his wits, trading what people have for what they _think_ they need—and of course what they need can change drastically in the course of just a single day! Take myself, for instance—what I needed a day ago, when I met your lovely young student, is quite markedly different from what I need now!"

"So you don't need me, anymore?" Vina asked, drily, seizing the moment and coming out from around that corner, the blaster drawn and playfully pointed in his direction.

"There she is!" the mustached man effused, standing up as if to greet her with open arms—which, under the circumstances, was only a minor embarrassment. He whimsically shrugged his shoulders, to show his straitened circumstance.

"So, what went wrong," she said, looking the two men up and down.

"He tried to ransom me to my own people," T'Mara said, simply.

"Well," the mustached man hastily added, "and then the Vulcans said they wouldn't take him—_unless_ we went out and kidnapped some young Earth woman in the bargain as well, whom I'd certainly never heard of, an Amanda Grayson. It seemed so completely arbitrary! But now Captain Markowitz is angry with me—_me!_—because I've not got every single solitary young Earth woman captured right here inside my threadbare little coat pocket! Honestly, the greed and avarice of some people is simply beyond human ken sometimes."

"Nobody's capturing anybody," Vina said, shaking her head and trying to figure out what to do next. She could only imagine that Professor T'Lan had done the same thing as Professor T'Mara, and somehow received a message from her own self in the future, to put a stop to all this meddling in the past, one way or another… and that T'Lan's younger self had promptly gone back and warned Vulcan high command about some Earth girl who played a part in all of this, in a way none of them could possibly have guessed.

The question now was, did Vina want to release either of these two males, to ruin her life any further?

"Well, aren't you going to set us free?" The human was still eager and smiling, but once again sweat had begun to shine on his brow.

"That's a very interesting question," she answered, kicking aside another open suitcase at her feet. "Everyone wants to rummage through everyone else's things, don't they?" she smiled, as the Vulcan and the human stared back.

"Opinions?" she asked, as if they were all on an equal footing.

"Obviously, my own people are only marginally interested in my own activities," T'Mara said. "A reasonable person would assume my own ability to change the future is now… somewhat limited." At this, he seemed faintly bittersweet, acknowledging the potential for pointlessness in anyone's existence. But, as a master of logic and self-control, it barely seemed to faze him.

"I, on the other hand," her boyfriend quickly threw-in, "am inextricably bound up in fate—in every conceivable way."

"Oh, really?"

Even T'Mara seemed intrigued by that.

"Well, suppose I told you I've been in receipt of my own messages from the future, concerning all manner of things! Vulcans aren't the only ones with a sense of destiny thrust upon them, you know."

"I see," Vina nodded. But she was already making moves toward the port side engine room, via a corridor across the informal brig.

"For example," the mustached man said, watching her pick her way across the littered deck, across the back end of the cargo bay, "I believe I'll go on to a very profitable—er, a very _influential _career as a sort of diplomat without portfolio—"

"Okay, hold that thought, I'll be back in a few hours," she sighed, stepping through more piles of personal belongings from visitors who'd stayed too long, or strayed too close, to the crew of this vessel. And disappeared soon after.

But it was too late, and the pirates were pushing and shoving their way down the long access gangway, straight in her direction. They were still a good thirty meters' away, but moving fast, straight towards her.

She looked around and saw a computer port against the far wall, across from T'Mara, and dug down for that yellow computer plaque, even as she tossed the blaster to her old professor. With a little grimace of tension, Vina dropped the yellow plaque into the plug-in port, and took off running.

There was the sound of a few loud, perfunctory blaster shots off behind her, in a very strategic pattern, which strongly suggested T'Mara had either got himself free, or scared off the first of the pirates who'd come bursting in on the two prisoners. Either way, she felt she'd paid her debt in full to the man who taught her all about warp drive. Hopefully T'Mara would realize he was now in her debt, and future be damned. If there was any logic in that.

As for her boyfriend, well, she felt quite sure he'd be safest where she'd left him, along with the rest of the galaxy, too. She was equally sure T'Mara wouldn't waste a lot of time trying to set him free. And Captain Markowitz had no particular grievance against him, so Vina imagined he'd be harmlessly tied to that pipe at stern for the foreseeable future. She kicked her way through more of the endless stream of debris that stretched as far as she could see in either direction.

Then, almost in surprise, she heard a familiar woman's voice, speaking in calm, measured tones throughout the ship.

_This is my daughter-in-science, in whom I am well pleased._

It was Professor T'Lan.

The sentence reverberated through the big cargo ship, and repeated a minute or so later. As she picked her way forward through the mess, Vina paused to see a computer screen in an airlock to the big cargo bay, showing her own student ID from the Academy—with that funny expression of pride and bemusement, at being a newly minted scientist of Starfleet, and knowing all the while that all her great promise was yet to be fulfilled.

There were a few loud, electrical-sounding _ka-chunks! _as blasters were fired back the way she'd come, like short bursts of thunder—she only hoped T'Mara was relatively safe, and that her new boyfriend hadn't somehow outsmarted the Vulcan, and gotten the blaster away for himself. Either way, she didn't exactly want either one of them breathing down her neck.

"There she is!" It was one of the pirates, up ahead. She tried to remember what rooms and compartments she'd passed already, that she could run and hide in. But one man, and then another, were 'broken-field' running toward her, across the cargo boxes and personal belongings of dozens of long-gone voyagers—of captives, just like her.

She ran back to the airlock and jumped in, once again confronted by her student ID from ten years' earlier on another screen. And then she realized, T'Lan had somehow taken control of the ship, through that little plaque. Nice to have a Vulcan genie, she mused. Until her wishes ran out.

With a moment's anxiety, she pressed the computer interface button by the screen. It would immediately alert the men on board to her precise whereabouts.

"Pressurize cargo bay," she said, a little tentatively—not knowing what to expect.

And, with a horrendous metallic gasp, she could hear great blowers all around roaring to life, filling the arena-sized space with breathable air. Bits of wreckage stirred up in the sudden breezes down below, where gutted ships lay like an ocean graveyard. She looked behind her to make sure the airlock was sealed against the pirates, who quickly began pounding on the hatch.

"_Airlock is fifty percent pressurized," _a computer voice announced, routinely, even as the pirates were shouting at her from the other end of the long gangway.

She realized she had to plan out her next few steps, before flying off to freedom once more. With just as much tentative caution, she pressed the interface button again, next to her photo on the screen.

"Computer: drop out of warp space, prepare to open cargo bay doors on my command. When my ship is clear, safely deliver this ship to the authorities at the planet Vulcan."

"_Returning to impulse power." _And with that, the background roar of the warp engines slowed like great dynamos, wavering slightly off balance, and ringing through the hull.

"_Cargo bay is now pressurized," _the computer said.

"I am preparing to exit this vessel on the ship most recently brought in," Vina explained. "Can you copy my original plaque into that ship, from Professor T'Lan?"

"_Affirmative. Copied to newest vessel." _

She popped the outer hatch into the cargo bay, and tried not to look all the way down into the wreckage far below. Up ahead, seventy-five meters', was the yacht that had brought her this far. She hoped it wasn't too badly damaged in their capture.

And, as she approached, far across the bay, she could see Professor T'Mara burst in through another airlock, looking fearsome or desperate, and hurrying one way, and then the other, as if to jump across and catch her before she could escape once more.

17

17

_By Richard T. Green_


	7. Chapters 14 and 15

_Vina Escaped II: Green Blood, Red Blood_

**Chapter Fourteen **

**Captain's Log: **_We remain cut off from the _Enterprise _in a situation of increasing danger. Geological instability on a gas giant's moon has worsened on this second day of our mission to capture another keeper—the gradual disintegration of the moon being most likely the result of the recent uprooting of the northern forests, to satisfy the northerner's new god, this latest keeper. Mr. Spock and Lt. Atangze remain on reconnaissance in the north, and Dr. McCoy, Lt. Brady, and Lt. Hoblitzel and myself are now emerging in the warmth of night, under the light of the mother world. _

"I don't understand how any of this could have evolved," McCoy looked around at the trees, laden with heavy blue crystalline boughs, "with everything shaking all the time like this."

"Most likely this moon was captured, and has slowly moved in closer to the gas giant, sir, over time," Brady said, as the doctor looked up at the sky that bulged down. "It allows for greater warmth, from the steady tides of the inner core—but eventually…"

"It'll increase the risk of geological disturbance," Kirk nodded, "as they get closer and closer. Analysis, Brady," he said, looking up, even as Dr. McCoy began searching the landscape, along with the security man.

"We don't have that much information on these piston-engine cores," the junior science officer said, tapping away at her tricorder. "But it is possible the north will feed deeper instability below the surface, and greater underground fissures could result from those new upper level shocks."

"Nice trick," McCoy said, laconically. "Convince the locals to destroy their own planet for you. As some kind of a dream for salvation."

Kirk nodded, without approval.

B'lisbeh, their hostess, went running off all of a sudden, after some small mammal that she'd spotted between trees. And, in her pursuit, she ran up into the branches for a quick meal. All around, more and more of the leopard-like beings were doing the same, hunting for scarcely-seen creatures that hurried under the leaves or across the roots at their feet.

And, just like that, the moon shook again: as bad as any of the more recent quakes, and B'lisbeh came crashing down out of the tree, on all fours. She gave one swallow, as she finished devouring some much smaller creature, and shook herself when the commotion had died down.

"There, see?" Brady approached the captain, completely absorbed in the image on her scanner.

On the little screen was a cut-away view of the moon's geological strata: with one upper-level crack, maybe a mile down, highlighted by a jagged yellow line. And, far below that was that strange beating heart of this little captured world, threatening to break the upper-level crack even wider apart, as one loose molten section of core went pounding against a larger ball of iron: yanked back and forth as the moon spun, under the pull of the gas giant.

Jim Kirk could plainly see that everything had been fine, in perfect balance, till the keeper arrived: the core's piston action generated enough warmth for the surface, and the trees maintained stability along the crust, for a civilization to gradually develop.

"That seems new, sir, or at least a lot more pronounced since we got here." She was pointing to the upper-level crack in the moon's mantle.

"Thank you, Lieutenant." He slowly turned to survey the scene, trying not to fix on the crushing, brilliant blue sky. Furry, spotted humanoids galloped across the landscape, hunting their food; and the upper decks of the riverboat still peered above the riverbank, while the barren north stretched out beyond that. And the black void between the horizon and the mother world suggested a bizarre crack in reality itself, they couldn't quite escape.

Then he began to hear that musical drumming again—those great sticks on hollow wooden tubes of every possible size. It was coming from the north, and he and McCoy set out to have a look. The other two crewmen followed.

As they climbed up to the top of the riverbank ridge, they could see the other two figures in Starfleet uniforms hotfooting it back to the south: Spock and Atangze. Farther behind, maybe a mile, a cloud of dust suggested they were being pursued.

Then Brady handed her tricorder up to him, from just downhill, and he looked into the little screen with growing horror.

"We've got to get to the boat," he said, looking behind at Hoblitzel and Brady, and grabbing McCoy by the shirtsleeve as he threw himself over the top of the bank. After watching him in his urgency, the others scrambled down toward the water with him.

"Jim, what is it?"

"The crack," he said, as all four of them entered the flowing water. One or two of the leopard-people were behind them, up on the ridge, looking confused. The dust was coming out of the moon, itself, as hundreds of underground dens collapsed on the heels of Spock and Atangze, who seemed in constant danger of being swallowed up from behind.

"Come on," Kirk called, waving them down toward the riverboat, as the landing party splashed in to the current and fought to get across to the big white vessel. Of course, they ended up about sixty or seventy meters downstream on the northern side, carried along by the water, and slogged back up to the boat as the crowds of leopards grew along the south bank—glowing eyes squinting out to the north, fur raising on their backs, tails whipping with concern.

"Come on!" Kirk waved again, to B'lisbeh and the others, as the four crewmen ran toward the boat. But the leopard-people wouldn't budge.

"We have to move to safer ground, if we can!"

A few of them made tentative steps toward the flowing water, and B'lisbeh herself finally threw her body in, her long back bucking in and out of the waves, as if she were running across the savannah. A few others followed, at last, as Hoblitzel and Kirk raced to untie the boat from the north bank. The northerners' music pounded on and on in the distance, growing closer.

Brady was pulling leopard people up out of the river, and McCoy was half in, up to his waist, struggling to hold the boat against the pull of the river, to give the last, hesitant felines a little more time to get on board.

Spock and Atangze came bursting over the north bank, arms flailing out at their sides as they suddenly ran out of horizontal land—and sliding down toward the water, gasping for breath as they splashed into the flow. It was as if they'd been drowning on dry land till now, thrashing wildly, and desperate to get into the river for safety.

Hoblitzel and Kirk had leapt across the meter or so between the bank and the boat, and were pulling the two men out of the water, as Brady and McCoy grabbed more leopard-people.

There was a misty orange dust cloud rising over the north bank now, and the waves in the river seemed to slosh from side to side, frightening off those who had waited too long on the south.

The riverboat was free now, and sliding out into the churning dark water. Jim Kirk raced up a staircase along the port side, to grab the wheel in the uppermost covered room, and the others were clambering toward the covered decks, away from the prow and the abrupt splash.

They were already moving briskly, with the three science officers holding out scanners this way and that, even as they clung to tie bars and wooden rails. The whole ship seemed to creak as they rode the river down, and the forward tongues under the hull began gasping in their sideways-fish-mouth fashion. The big dry wings out back, like huge box kites all strung together, slowly began their flapping.

"Another quake," Spock shouted, over the cacophony of the riverboat's propulsion, and the thrashing of water beneath the vessel, and the primitive drum-music that seemed to follow them now. "Seven point three," he called, as a thunder wracked the land, under the impossibly cheerful blue. Leopard people lined the south, in wonder, though some dashed around in panicked circles as if to protect their clan.

Now Spock was crawling across the forward deck toward the covered section, like a crab across the sand. Kirk was clinging to the wheel in the control room, trying not to run them all aground, though the banks menaced them from one side and another.

"We witnessed a strange combat between Dr. Orwell and this world's keeper," Spock said as he leaned into the pilothouse, half thrown-in by the tumult of land and water. Kirk looked hard-pressed, as he wrestled with the wheel to stay afloat, and couldn't comment on that telepathic battle to the north.

"Remind me to write a sharply-worded letter of complaint to Mark Twain," the starship captain shouted, as dust rained down on them, turning the white boat to gold, and making great amoeba-like puddles of mud of the flowing water below.

"We may meet up with him face-to-face, soon enough," Spock shouted over the noise, looking grim as the riverbanks shook and collapsed on either side.

"Try and contact the ship," Kirk said, his eyes fierce but his whole body seeming to scoot one way and then another, as the wheel kicked back and forth. Spock began fiddling with his communicator.

"Look—" Spock pointed out ahead, even as Kirk was fixed on the left bank, and then the right, which seemed to veer uncontrollably at the riverboat.

Kirk glanced up ahead, to see an aurora-like geyser of dirt rising, shimmering like a curtain of mist, against the gas giant overhead. Whatever it was, it was not very far ahead, downstream.

"Can we pull aground and tie-off?" Spock wondered, shouting in Kirk's ear.

"All this time I've been trying _not_ to pull aground!"

"It is difficult to tell what lies beyond that massive dust-wall," Spock said, pointing unnecessarily out ahead. "However, there are indications of a massive tectonic disruption."

"We can't wait here and just be prey to the collapse! We've got to try to get away from all that mantle activity!"

"I would recommend a short expeditionary mission," Spock said, without giving any indication that his words seemed perfectly ridiculous under the circumstances.

Kirk took just a second to look at him as if the Vulcan had been possessed by complete and utter madness. They were careening along in the current, first to port and then to starboard and back again—and the captain was just barely keeping ahead of the rushing water, wrestling with the great wheel.

And behind them, new bends and portages and rapids were forming upstream, rushing around the fallen mounds of the banks that were making the water unnavigable in the quaking. And up ahead that aurora-like curtain of dust showed no sign of stopping its rise across the face of the mother world.

"We have to try to get away from that zone of instability," Kirk shouted.

"The zone," Spock shouted back, though sounding utterly reasonable all the while, "is defined by the river itself—as a natural barrier between the south and the north, where the mantle and crust are folding!"

And that meant, Kirk realized in dismay, that they could never escape the crumbling part of the planet, as long as they were on the river.

"Then we'll have to crash her," he said, shaking his head after all his effort to prevent it.

"That should prove a relatively simple task," Spock said, squinting and peering ahead, as they sailed wildly along.

"Come on, let's get everyone together, and hope we don't fall in!"

And with that, Kirk and Spock climbed down from the pilothouse, as the banks raced by, nearer and farer, beneath the rain of dust. The ship began crunching heavily up against the mud, and then spinning slowly out into the main current again, before crashing hideously up against the other side, and back again. Flaps from the delicate stern-wings were beginning to dangle and fall off, into the churning water, and the dust was falling faster now.

Soon, all the others were all gathered up on the prow of the shallow-bottom boat, both leopards and landing party. The banks seemed to come lurching at them from one side and then the other, and they were clinging to railings and ropes for dear life, scarcely able to stand.

Finally, when a long, flat bank revealed itself up ahead, Kirk crawled between the others on the deck, and tried to get into a crouching position, despite the constant crashing of smashed wood on either side.

There was a fearsome _crack! _as one of the forward paddle-oars ran fully aground, and snapped off violently, pushing the ship back off into the central current again, away from the quiet bank, with a wracking up-and-down motion. That long tongue of wood was thrown out and aside, and they could see it spinning end over end on dry land, where they'd hoped to be by now. Then it tumbled back into the river behind them. The whole ship was splintering apart.

"This is it, we have to jump!" Kirk and the others were crouching toward the very edge of the deck, waiting for the inevitable, violent return to the shallows and mud. At this point, with all of them poised to escape, any sudden shift would have thrown them to the rushing flow, to be pulled under by the gasping forward oars.

"Come on!"

And with that, the bank seemed to swing back toward them, and the southern trees beyond the ridge fell out of sight, and the boat made another wild spin. Humans and half humans and furry, cat like humanoids were all splashing to dry land as fast as they could, rolling and gasping their way out, away from the runaway boat that was the latest evidence of this world's hungry, destructive power.

They were still running once they tumbled onto the mud, as if pursued and realized, one by one, there was a new twist in the river opened before them, up ahead—along with a chasm that devoured the great wooden vessel. It went tipping out of sight—slowly, slowly, groaning as it threatened to split in half, going over into a new rift in the moon's unsettled geology. Finally, the water pushed it out into mid-air, beneath the blackness and mist and dust at the edge of a new waterfall.

Kirk rushed forward, but saw only the last ghostly shapes of its ornate railings and fluttering aft-wings tumbling out into a brand new nothingness.

In a moment, it was gone. They couldn't hear any great crash over the roar of the waterfall. But at last they could see why so much dust was being thrown up in the air—hundreds, perhaps thousands of square miles of land had simply vanished. Kirk and Spock stood upon the edge of the world, the great blue sky above shining down as if nothing had happened at all. Except now, with the shattering of the horizon, the blackness was revealed beyond. And the gas giant was now like a child's balloon, whipped away by the wind.

B'lisbeh and Brady came up alongside, followed by the others, to look out over the mist.

"This was the old homeland, centuries ago," she said, once her low moans came out as flattened words in Brady's tricorder.

"Everyone get back," Kirk said, seeming as crushed as the riverboat below.

But the northerners were still approaching, running like leopards, towing long rickshaws behind them at a furious pace toward the chasm, musicians pounding on the flatbeds of the wagons, as the music grew closer. Spock held up his tricorder, crawling up the riverbank to get a better look.

"No sign of weapons," he announced, adjusting the controls with the usual quizzical expression.

"Just charging," Kirk said, mystified at first, and then grimacing: "or… running away."

They stood and watched, heads just above the ridge, as trails of dust rose behind the runners and their hitches.

"They're just running wild," McCoy said, over Kirk's shoulder, in disbelief. "To the cliff."

It was as bad as anything they'd heard about over Wrigley, or seen below Saldana, or brought with them to Rigel, where madness and death whirled like a heavy flywheel.

"Come on," Kirk said to Spock, and waved Hoblitzel up as well, while McCoy, Atangze and Brady stayed with the southerners, along the rushing water to the falls.

They climbed down into the open, as the northerners charged, threatening to drive the _Enterprise _men right off the edge with them.

"Set for stun," Kirk said, and the others adjusted their phasers, as he walked out into the field, north of the river: the dust cloud from the continental collapse rising to his right like a tombstone. None of the horde showed any sign of stopping, and the distant rumbling grew to a pounding roar as rickshaws bounced behind the galloping natives. The captain turned and saw a row of southerner's curious heads along the ridge, watching the scene before them.

Mr. Spock ran out across the barren field, even farther north: along the edge, where the mad herd would soon leap into the deep. And that left Jim Kirk in the middle, between the science officer and the security man, who were facing him like archaic duelists, poised with their phasers pointed up in the air: as if they might each lower them in his direction at any moment, from a hundred meters' apart.

Failing that, the onslaught would simply push him off into the abyss with the herd, as some unknown passion drove them on. He tried not to look completely overwhelmed.

**Chapter Fifteen **

"You broke my ship," Captain Markowitz smiled, standing in the airlock of the little yacht, which hung in his cavernous cargo bay. Across the wide, empty space, T'Mara seemed to be looking for something to shoot at, with the pirate's blaster.

"It looked pretty broke when I got here," Vina said, looking around at the vast, perpetual disaster.

"Yeah, well, a real man's gotta keep some things sort of hidden away, inside," Markowitz smiled, rakishly. It seemed he was thinking of his own lonely heart, and not the trash of pillaged ships that filled every walkway in his vessel.

In a way, it was a nice change from the usual Starfleet cadets who were always sighing their steamy breath on her, who thought they had the Universe by the tail, and her too. But if this ship got much closer to Vulcan, she might never get away, once they'd heard T'Mara's side of the story.

"I'm sure you'll do just fine, Captain," Vina said, eyeing the dead ships hanging along the edges of the bay, under the forty or so harsh lights that still worked. It was funny, to her, to think that Markowitz would soon be hanging in some Vulcan storage locker himself, at least till they figured out what to do with him.

"Look," he said, his smile turning to something a little more slack-jawed, as he stepped forward, not knowing where to fix his eyes, but never quite letting them leave her glowing face. "Vulcan's no place for a guy like me, and you and I could really get along—"

"I don't know, Captain," she said, playfully stepping forward, and then around him at last. "Seems to me Vulcan needs somebody like you, and you need someplace like Vulcan. The thing you hate the most is usually what serves you best, as they say."

Now she was, at least, inside the airlock, and he seemed playfully taunted by her squeezing past him, with a look of feminine insolence in her eye. Every man wants to be told he's bad, by any woman who seems a half-a-notch better, anyway.

"Baby, don't go—"

But her fingertip had already brushed against the inner airlock control panel, and the hatch snapped shut in a fraction of a second. She was safe and alone, and fully inside. And all he could do was bang once on the barrier, from the other side. He actually looked sad, as she disappeared from the little portal, and headed to the cockpit to check on the download from T'Lan's yellow memory plaque.

Vina tensed her whole back, before forcing herself to relax, and silently whistled out a cold little sigh. Very standard controls were spread around before her. And T'Lan's new programming had already spread itself into the yacht, to handle all the rest.

"Computer," she said, sitting down in the pilot's seat, at last.

"_Working." _It seemed faster already, in responding.

"Stand by to open cargo doors, sound alert, stand-by depressurization."

The whole cargo bay turned into some hideous version of a space-port dance floor, with warning lights beating on and off, without any music. Then, the loud, flat voice of the pirate ship's computer, very male but very neutral, began warning Markowitz and T'Mara, on opposite walkways, to run for safety.

"_Cargo bay decompression in sixty seconds. Cargo bay must be fully evacuated for safety reasons, prior to life-averse conditions. Cargo bay decompression in fifty-two seconds."_

She tried craning her neck out toward where her old Vulcan professor had been dodging back and forth, to find a way to stop her, and then (apparently) looking for some computer terminal to override her escape. She'd caught sight of him huddled over a little remote port before she got past Markowitz a minute ago.

She couldn't see her old professor at all now, which was even worse—he was probably hot-footing it around the vast expanse surrounding, out through the gangways to get around here, and force his way in, or at least disable the yacht if he could, with the very blaster she'd given him.

Markowitz, like too many human males before him, had seemingly just given up, and heeded the voice of the computer warning. Or, at least, she couldn't see him any more, either, checking by the airlock monitor screen. So, that simplified things quite a bit.

"Prepare to disengage from tethers," she said aloud, surrounded by more and more glowing control panels, as the warning siren finally kicked in, at the thirty-second mark.

"_Cargo bay decompression in twenty-five seconds."_

She hoped her new boyfriend, the mustached man, had better luck on Vulcan than he had with her. But she doubted it.

"_Standing by for bay gas re-capture," _the flat male computer voice echoed. The small, spinning warning lights exploded brightly on, casting the ghost ships below in fearsome shadows.

"Cargo ship: continue on course to Vulcan," she said, her eyes darting across the different status screens and dozens of smaller displays both overhead and at her fingertips.

"_Course confirmed," _the same flat voice said, inside the cockpit with her.

"Yacht stand by, plot course to the Delta-Vega region." It was one of the least explored so far, and well suited to her purposes.

"_Preliminary course plotted, with routing options available on screen." _It was the female voice of the yacht, just as bland and disengaged, in spite of the frantic, pulsing lights out in the cargo bay, and what she expected at any moment: T'Mara to come racing out with seconds to spare, before the giant doors overhead burst apart, and receded into the wide engine pylons.

"_Decompression in ten, nine, eight, seven…" _

"Five-four-three-two-one," she muttered, as quickly as she could. She hated the theatricality of countdowns, and a strangled ball of anxiety rose within her throat, making her neck bright pink as she looked upward and waited.

Bits of rubber and broken metal gaskets and seals began rattling down in the bottom of the bay, as the mighty blowers inhaled the last of the air all up and down the length of the great hanger. The loose bits began floating around down there in the vacuum.

Finally, with the usual _bang! _echoing through the metal of the ships, the hanger doors pulled apart. A few little clouds of nitrogen and oxygen and carbon dioxide exploded in white ice crystals and _whooshed!_ out into the dark open space above.

"Confirm negative tethers, confirm negative gantry."

"_Gantries and tethers negative." _

_Well, that was easy_, she sighed again.

The little yacht tilted away from the wall and the automatic departure program floated the pleasure craft out on thrusters into the middle of the bay, as the giant doors pulled farther and farther apart. And then, born out into space, her ship rose like a dewdrop in the dim light of distant stars. The much larger ship seemed to drift peacefully away to its own captivity.

But Vina still didn't know what was next for her. In any case, she supposed she'd have T'Lan to thank when she got there. For now, though, the giant doors of the cargo bay were already sliding shut in silence as T'Mara, the mustached man and Markowitz all proceeded toward the red dot of the professor's home world.

She could barely contain herself during that brief moment, sitting motionless in space, though her ship was actually just slowing from the pace of the pirates' ship. It looked like she was being left behind, but she knew in a moment she would really be on her own way to freedom.

The great pirate vessel fired up its impulse engines, disappearing faster now; and she could hear her own warp engines warming up behind the cockpit, with a steady warbling song that raised the little hairs on the back of her neck.

"What's that?" Lt. Monroe asked, pausing with his hand-held particle calibrator, to look over Mr. Scott's shoulder in the fabrication shop on board the USS _Enterprise_.

"It's a satellite, can ye not see it plain enough, laddie?"

"Well, sure, Mr. Scott," Monroe laughed, in spite of himself: at the touchiness of the chief engineer, hunched over a canister-like contraption.

"I got the idea," Scotty said, standing up stiffly at last, "from that set-up in sickbay, where they had that big-brained creature stuck between two tiny little field-generators."

"Oh," Monroe nodded, though he'd only heard about the brainwave dampeners second-hand, and not long before that particular keeper happened to be murdered by the old woman.

"I was askin' myself why we couldn'a put some of those same energy fields down in orbit around whole planets, if we wanted to—to keep whatever telepaths still left out there from havin' their way with the local population." He glanced imperiously at the younger man now, expecting at least a drop of admiration for his scheme.

"But won't that just stop people from dreaming, altogether, sir?"

"What kind of a question is that, ye young fool? 'Keep people from dreaming!' Are ye out of yer mind?" Scotty's tone became irate. "Get back to work!"

And with that, Monroe walked back to the main engineering room where dilithium crystals wove matter and anti-matter together in shielded tanks, and sent the barely cohesive mixture up to the huge warp engines far above. The younger man might even have been smiling a little, which only annoyed Mr. Scott more.

The chief engineer folded his arms and set his jaw, squinting at the cylindrical device as if it were now nothing more than a house of cards, just waiting to be knocked down by the next little breeze.

"'_Keep people from dreamin.'_ If that's not the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of," Scotty ranted, privately: pacing back and forth, and finally ending up at his original schematics on a wide glowing table, shaking his head in bitterness at being so completely misunderstood.

It occurred to him that Monroe might just be infected, himself—what was the word? "Contaminated," by the keepers, to keep the chief engineer's satellites from ever being used as a shield over the next planet they dragged their weary idealism to. But then he realized there was no keeper on board, so maybe Monroe was right. Maybe the younger man wasn't contaminated at all.

Still, he supposed it was worth a try, and being senior officer on board the USS _Enterprise_, and a Scot, completely unafraid to make an executive decision…

"Computer," he said, staring at the schematic drawings one last time, looking for the flaw he hadn't found yet.

"_Working." _

"Make me up… a dozen of these, to drop out of the lower hatch, into orbit, as soon as possible."

"_Please allow one hour for complete fabrication." _

"Yea, sure, what's another hour," Scotty sighed to himself, after the last week or so of bizarre and inexplicable chasing around. He stared at the drafting table again, but he didn't really see all the diagram lines and little notations anymore. Just the blue-hot tiredness inside his own mind.

They were still cut-off from the landing party, but a recon mission less than an hour before had shown nothing out of the ordinary down on the moon. So, he had time to putter around with this new gadget.

Jim Kirk raised both arms, in what he hoped was a universal gesture of caution—as the hordes of leopard-people came roaring across the northern plain, to the newly opened crevasse behind him: their racing paws kicking up another cloud of dust that spread like a tray to catch the towering cloud falling from the sky.

And slowly, Spock and the security man, separated by 200 meters and Kirk in the middle, extended their phasers to fire: to create a kind of light-barrier that might save the natives from plunging to their deaths when they ran out of flat land moments from now.

Kirk wasn't sure if the earth was still shaking, or if was the pounding in his ears from the war drums on rickshaws that bounced along behind the teams of humanoids.

He waited as long as he could, and he could clearly see the wild-eyed expression on the faces of the northerners, as they got nearer and nearer, without showing any sign of slowing.

Then he saw humans, actual _Homo sapiens_, bouncing along on some of the rickshaws here and there, amidst the dust and racing felines. They appeared to be wearing very familiar clothing, and in a moment he knew they were supposed to be his Ruth, and Carol and Edith, all tied-down and writhing as their unmistakable doom stretched before them at the end of the plains.

Far from alarming or frightening him, though, Jim Kirk was filled with rage at this intrusion into his own mind, by the keeper-god who'd first arrived on that riverboat the night before.

He raised his arms a little higher, and nodded, as if he were about to perform some Olympic-style dive, backwards off the cliff.

Both the phaser beams leapt out, far across the wide field, like green fire: one, from the red-shirt, ultimately sizzling south into the river bank; the other (from Spock) just sailing northward, off into eternity, beyond the horizon, into the blackness.

The two lines formed a thin, but unmistakable barrier less than a meter in front of the captain, crisscrossing exactly before him, at the level of his own heart, and trembling slightly from the vibration where each man stood off to his distant right or left.

Finally, the headlong rush was upon him, and the phaser beams splashed like great puddles of green light in the air, first a few, then a torrent, as the northerners were stunned and went sliding toward the cliff's edge. Shimmering blots signaled each new strike, a dozen, then a hundred, then a hundred more, as each of the keeper's worshippers came so close to making the ultimate sacrifice.

Gradually the two green glowing lines were sweeping westward, to a sharper point beyond the massive barrier of stunned felines, to avoid striking them a second time as the bodies stacked up. Beyond that, the lines were lost in the dust left behind the stampede. Much closer, newer blobs of stun-fire nearly blocked his view, like summer lightning behind the clouds, till the last of the northerners were hitting the phaser-line: spinning sideways and collapsing in the quick-fading light.

The explosions of green continued for what seemed like several minutes, until a wall of sleeping leopard-people gradually formed like a riverbank itself, forty or fifty meters from the cliff, where the two beams formed a point or a wedge: like the prow of some ship of light, as Jim Kirk stood like Odysseus at the mast, against cliff, against an unheard Sirens' song.

Now there was just stillness, without even the trembling of the moonscape beneath his boots. Nevertheless, he began walking back to the safer south, against the lustrous mist of a new waterfall.

"No sign of the alien?" Kirk asked, checking over his shoulder again. At last, Spock held his phaser toward the ground.

"No sir."

Hoblitzel caught up from behind them, from across the field, and they began dragging unconscious humanoids off the long pile, so the ones underneath didn't suffocate. What would happen when they awoke again was anyone's guess.

"When they see how close they came… to death," Kirk said, as each man dragged sleeping bodies into smaller heaps, "they might think twice about this 'god' of theirs."

"History has seldom born that out," Spock said, hoisting two leopard-men at a time, by the nape of the neck. He arranged them in nice, neat rows.

On the other side of all this, rickshaws littered the last two or three acres to the edge of the cliff, strewn every which-way, like some awful traffic accident. But there was no sign of Vina or the keeper.

Gradually the southerners, along with McCoy and Brady and Atangze, emerged from behind the riverbank, where they'd been hiding since jumping off that doomed riverboat. Now all the _Enterprise _people were busy organizing the limp bodies of the northerners.

"They are not dead?" B'lisbeh said, near Brady and her tricorder.

"Nobody deserves to die for being misled," Kirk said, as diplomatically as he could, though it was hard work dragging leopard-people two at a time, to keep up with his much stronger Vulcan first officer, and the gorilla-like Hoblitzel. If he could possibly have managed three at a time, as a good leader, he knew he'd have to.

"It is simply a great deal of trouble," she said—with a series of small yowls and growls, "doing good for a people who tried to destroy our world."

Kirk stopped and looked at her, half in the light of day, half in the starlight, and nodded. He caught the eye of Dr. McCoy, who was dragging bodies off the long row one at a time, like Brady. It really was like sorting the dead after some historic disaster. He dared to stop pulling bodies off one another for a moment or two, as the others worked unflinchingly.

"We've encountered… many people in our voyages," he began, in the usual way, without trying to sound above it all. "And many of them have some kind of Judgment Day, they look forward to, or more often inflict upon themselves… and those who don't agree. Or those who seem like easy targets.

"But your northerners, and their Judgment Day… was just a very bad… night. Nothing more. Maybe we can still stop your world from tearing itself apart. But you have to stop being divided, as well. A river gives life, even if it separates people. Your mother planet gives light, even if it's not a 'heaven.' You have to live with what you've got."

With that, he looked up again, at the vast blue sky: receding into the west.

"But," B'lisbeh argued, with equally mild tone of voice, "they have become strident, and factional, unscientific, and cruel."

"You can give me a list," Kirk nodded, gently, but going back to dragging stunned northerners again, "of every high-minded thing you expect from other people, B'lisbeh. And I can turn right around and give you a list right back," he added, "of every single thing they'll do… to drive you crazy."

He watched her with a faint smile, as his words came out of Brady's tricorder in a series of elemental meows. He was hoping to see if she could find any humor in it, or if the facts were just too cold for that beautiful spotted fur of hers.

And now, inevitably, the northerners were coming around again, tails whipping against the ground, heads shaking and paws unsteady, as they slowly came to their feet. The initial reaction was not good.

"You have blocked our way to heaven!" one of the northerners said, through Spock's tricorder, while others growled ominously, and crept to sniff the edge of the cliff. There was a bottom somewhere far below, where the waterfall turned to steam. Their Hell was still obscured, though close at hand.

The northerners were all rising, unsteadily, and forming a half-circle round the landing party, at the edge. Clearly, a stun-hangover had not improved their attitude.

"Any more pithy remarks?" McCoy whispered, right over his shoulder, as the northerners began to bare their fangs. Jim Kirk only raised his eyebrows, and not a single word came into his head.

17

17

_By Richard T. Green_


	8. Chapters 16 and 17 (Conclusion)

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_Vina Escaped II: Green Blood, Red Blood_

**Chapter Sixteen **

"That ought to do it," Scotty said, surveying the neat rows of satellites that had been fabricated by transporters: woven from parts he'd set out, carefully, and new circuitry he'd sketched out, from out of his own head: before everything was merged together in swirls of light out on the deck of the shuttle bay. Soon, they'd be dropped out of a hatch and into strategic positions above the moon.

"We can take it from here, sir," O'Neil nodded, as a handful of engineers reviewed the programming circuits with hand-held scanners, walking up and down the lines of round metallic objects.

"Aye, I'll be up on the bridge. Let me know when you're ready."

"Yes sir."

A few minutes later, Montgomery Scott sat down at last in the captain's chair, glancing warily at the big viewscreen, and the big blue glowering eye ahead. With the moon passing between, it seemed like its gaze was slowly turning away.

"Mr. Scott," one of the junior science officers said, stepping down from the turbolift with two others, a pretty redhead and an Indian named Ramook he'd worked with before. All three wore blue tunics, and held wedge-pads in their hands, for his signature on their reports.

"Back from the shuttle expedition, are ye?" Scotty sighed, taking the first report and flipping through the screens, in the center seat.

"Yes sir, no sign of trouble down there," Ensign Calvin spoke right up. "We did record landing party life-signs under the surface, they seemed to be fine."

Scotty looked skeptically at this first young man, as if his report seemed a little light on details.

"Mr. Scott," Uhura called from over his right shoulder, at the communications post.

"Aye, what is it, lass?"

"Shuttle bay reports: ready to launch satellites."

"Aye, go ahead, activate as soon as possible."

"Yes, Mr. Scott."

She spoke quietly into the console, the fingers of one hand balancing like a gymnast on the light pads before her.

"And you, lass," Scott said, glancing up finally at the next of the expedition members. Her name was Cirron, a green-eyed Jordanian.

"Same thing, sir: increased planetary instability—or 'lunar' instability, I should say, because of the core and the apparent deforestation we saw; but otherwise, no sign of—"

Just then she stopped, and gasped. And Scotty rose out of the chair with a sense of horror. All three of the young science officers were covered in blood, and it was as if he was seeing it all for the first time.

He looked back and forth across their faces, and each one of them was equally astonished, and knew in an instant it must have had something to do with their trip down in the shuttle. Blood on their faces, and in their hair, as if they'd been party to some ghastly murder, and hadn't even known it.

Scotty turned his wretched expression away from the splattered juniors, to glower at the main viewscreen.

"All departments, re-scan the moon below at once," he said. "All three of ye, get cleaned up, and get ready to go down there again, on the double."

"Yes, sir," each of them answered quietly, before filing back into the little lift capsule, looking at each other in utter bewilderment, before the red doors snapped shut.

"Mr. Scott!" It was Sulu, looking up from his control panel forward of the captain's chair, at the helm.

"What is it, Mr. Sulu?"

"Look—a big part of the surface has been torn open," the navigator said, as calmly as he could.

"Aye, it's the subsurface instability, right enough," Scotty nodded, leaning back at last: as if he finally had a moment to collect his thoughts.

"Mr. Scott," Uhura said, looking as surprised as everyone else on the bridge, but covering it with a veneer of fierce concentration.

"Go ahead."

"Shuttle bay reports—"

"Put it on audio, Lieutenant," Scotty answered, when she seemed to freeze-up, as words suddenly failed her.

The sound of a shuttle mechanic came through after a few beeps, when she pushed another set of light-pads.

"_There's blood coming out of one of the shuttles, number four, down here."_

Scotty grimaced and nodded, as if it made some kind of sense. That was the same flyer those three plebes had taken down.

"Better get security and some medics down there, right away," the chief engineer said, and Uhura leaned down to the communications panel to begin wrangling officers from each division, down to the bay.

"Let's hear some chatter, for God's sake," Scotty said at last, as the ring of elite officers all around him went through their scans all over again, as if for the first time.

"Mr. Scott," Uhura said, recovering herself.

"Go ahead."

"The shuttle bay is reporting another… keeper is in vessel four, sir, it's—they say it's nearly dead."

"Get it to sickbay; see if they still have those brainwave dampeners working, Lieutenant."

"Aye, sir."

"Any sign of the woman?"

Uhura bent in to the console and repeated the question.

"None, Mr. Scott."

"Better contact the captain, see if he's all right."

"Aye-aye."

"We have a core schematic," the science officer on bridge duty said, between Uhura and the main viewer.

"On screen," Scott nodded.

There, after the moon and the huge gas giant faded away, was a simple spheroidal animation of the little world, a cutaway view showing that odd piston-like inner core, thrust up against a molten ball farther down; and a very rough stair-step pattern of subterranean plates that interconnected all the way up to the surface, into that new canyon Sulu had finally spotted moments before.

"Every time the moon spins," the science officer said, pointing to the screen, "those plates beneath jumble upward again, in response to the gas giant's gravity."

"Aye," Scotty nodded, in grim confirmation: "it's shakin' apart then."

"Yes sir. Less than two days, probably in close proximity to the rift."

Scotty tried to imagine everything that might go wrong, and everything that might be revealed to them, now that the local keeper was near death, like the one Vina killed before beaming down, with Scotty himself at the controls. He stood up and paced forward, to lean against the helm by the slender, sandy haired Mr. Painter. Then, he turned back toward Uhura.

"Have ye got the captain, yet, lassie?"

"He's not answering, Mr. Scott," she said, quietly.

"Can ye track 'em, visually on the screen, and give me a look?"

"I'll try, sir."

Long seconds passed, and then they were looking down on the new cliff from a strange angle: seeing the chasm in the foreground, and the landing party with their backs to it, up above. It was pretty clear they'd been pressed to the edge by the furry, spotted humanoids, now rising from their stunned slumber.

"Shall I put the transporter room on stand-by, sir?"

"Aye, better do so. But let's see what happens," he said, imagining the captain was just about to make some great, stirring speech to save the day. Still, it made him want to pace around the bridge, and when he'd circled the lower level and back to the command chair, he reached across the seat and punched a button on the arm.

"Security, be on the lookout for the elderly woman, Vina Orwell. She may have come back up on shuttle four."

"Yes, Mr. Scott," came the answer through the arm of the chair.

"Shouldn't be that hard to find, if she's up here," he reasoned. "Not with those satellites, blockin' the power of illusion."

"Scotty," Mr. Sulu turned around, from the helm.

"Aye, lad?"

"What if this just brings more keepers this way, to find out what happened to their new 'mind-scape' here?"

"Well, then," Scotty folded his arms over his chest, looking very bluff and defiant. "Maybe they'll have to bring the fight to us, for a change."

He tried to imagine a "blacked-out spot" on some alternate, telepathic map of the galaxy, where there was suddenly no keeper's influence: a dot of absence, made possible by these new satellites: a blind spot in the telepathic landscape of space. A "black hole," that might suck in every other keeper too, sooner or later.

It made him smile, for the first time he could remember, even as he watched his captain and Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy below, on the main screen: all about to be pushed off a sheer cliff, as the _Enterprise _paused in orbit far above. Somehow, their momentary problem, on that crumbling moon, seemed a bit trivial, in comparison to this possible new tool against their foes.

"Uhura," he said, easing back down into the captain's chair at last. "Send a report on the new satellites, with schematics, to Starfleet. Tell them to gi' 'em a try."

"Aye, Mr. Scott."

"And keep signalin' the captain." Scotty leaned back in the center-seat, and watched as Kirk stared-down the cat-like northerners at the edge of their world.

"Aye," the chief engineer nodded quietly, imagining another keeper, ripped to shreds, being carried from the shuttle bay to deck five. "It'll be a good thing, to be on the other end of a bloody nose for once with them."

"Engineering to Mr. Scott," came a strange-sounding voice through the arm of the captain's chair. The senior officer reached over and punched the button on his right.

"Aye, what is it, Mr. Monroe?"

"I've just been going through the computer logs, and—well, you better look at those schematics again."

"For the satellites?" Scotty was just a tiny bit offended, to be "challenged" on this again, by one of his most junior officers.

"Aye, sir, the computer issued a warning on them over an hour ago, and apparently nobody caught it."

So that's the next little surprise, now that this latest keeper is almost dead, Scotty realized. He spoke aloud from the center of the bridge.

"Computer, put it up on the main viewer, the schematics of the brainwave satellites." He looked straight ahead, his cheeks growing cold, and his dark eyes preparing themselves to stare into some awful, previously unseen truth.

The image of the moon wavered and was replaced by a schematic rendering of one of the big, canister-like satellites they'd just spread upon the lower orbit.

In typical engineering fashion, an animation of the satellite spun around once, slowly, revealing all of its outer aspects, which looked perfectly as he'd planned it, super-powered brainwave dampeners and all, just where they should be, and all properly connected and tied-down, long arcs of heavy metal brackets that should "broadcast" the jamming signal to block the keepers' thought transmissions.

Then the outer casing pulled away on the screen, floating out of sight in four sections, and piece after piece of the interior structure came forward for examination, seemingly over Mr. Sulu and Mr. Painter's heads at the helm. It was a day-off for Mr. Chekov, who was undoubtedly down below, flirting with the ensigns.

Gradually, this disrobing animation continued until the satellite was just a revolving set of interior coils and bottles and conduits and connectors. Each of them broke out, and one by one floated "forward," for examination.

"Wait a minute," Scotty said, rising from the captain's seat, his arms spread slightly.

"Those are anti-matter bottles," Mr. Sulu said, even as Scotty stood over his shoulder, trying to remember any of that ever being assembled, in the last six or eight hours.

"Computer," he said, loud and clear. "Disable those satellites at once."

"_Satellites are under independent control, as per their original design," _the computer voice calmly replied.

"Targeting with phasers," Mr. Sulu said, trying to stay a step ahead of his commander.

"Transporter room, get the landing party up here at once," Scotty said, feeling like a fool for waiting so long.

"Out of range, sir," Lt. Kyle's voice came back, right away.

"Get us back around, but stay clear of those devices," Scotty said, gritting his teeth at his own fallibility.

"Going out to maximum orbit," Sulu said, as the view of the great blue giant returned on screen. Staying clear of the mother world, and the powerful explosives in orbit below, was going to be a chore.

"Aye," Scotty said. He glanced to his left. "Mr. Tracy," he said to the lieutenant at engineering on the bridge. "Get me a reading on dilithium and antimatter status."

"Aye, Mr. Scott."

"Better go to red alert," the senior officer added, folding his arms, his face going hot at the pure wickedness of the keepers, and at his own rank foolishness.

The alarm klaxon began to _whoop!_ and it felt as if the whole ship had been newly flushed with adrenalin.

"Targeting satellites," Mr. Painter said, as plain as ever. And at the sound of the alert, Scotty fully expected Mr. Chekov to come bursting out of the turbolift at any moment. What better way to bid farewell to an adoring clutch of young ladies, than a heroic return to the bridge, on one's day off?

On the screen, a dozen blinking dots appeared in orbit: like a phalanx of strange linebackers over the moon, which grew smaller as they flew out to a wider orbit.

"Phaser status," Scotty said, almost without thinking.

"Phasers standing by," Painter nodded.

Sure enough, just then, Pavel Chekov emerged from out of the lift, and tapped Painter on the shoulder. Without complaint, the standby officer stepped out, and Chekov slid in, quickly sizing-up the problem.

No one wanted to say what would happen, if all of the satellites went into a matter-antimatter explosion, but (so close to the moon itself) the results would certainly be catastrophic, perhaps even to the ship.

"Is there any way we can gather them up, and the anti-matter too?" Chekov asked.

"We're ne'er meant to do that, laddie," Scotty grumbled, simmering to have designed his own undoing.

There was a moment's pause, and he looked ahead: losing all his anti-matter meant waiting five or six days here in the middle of nowhere, for an emergency dreadnaught to bring out more fuel for the warp drive. It seemed unlikely that any new attack by the keepers could be mounted against the _Enterprise _in the meantime. And so, with a sigh of dismay, he steeled himself and spoke at last.

"Fire when ready." But it was still like giving the order to break his own legs.

Chekov's hands clamped-down on the light-pads, and long blue beams of energy leapt out of the _Enterprise_, targeting the first satellite. A brutal ray flashed for about three seconds on its target, and a moment later there was a brilliant white explosions above the trembling moon.

"Mr. Scott," Tracy said, amidst the sound of the phasers, "warp power is down to zero." It was the first time anyone had said it, though they'd all guessed it by now.

"Continue firing," Scotty nodded.

"Targeting satellite over the landing party," Chekov said, as they came around, far above that new chasm again.

"Fire when ready." The blue rays shot out, as if accusing the darkness, and another brilliant light appeared.

"Mr. Scott, it looks like the satellites we haven't hit yet, are going into intermix," Sulu said. And so, they knew that each one had been engineered as a miniature version of their own warp drive.

"Aye," Scotty nodded grimly. "One brief moment of clarity, before we go crashin' into the sun."

Down on the moon, Jim Kirk had been speaking quietly, almost apologetically to the northerners, who now seemed fully recovered from their phaser stuns.

"You can follow… your god with absolute devotion—but no one can truly see where he's been, or where he's going," he added. "Terrible things happen when people are disobedient, and terrible things… also… happen, when people are totally obedient. You can't pick and choose, which ones make you right, or your neighbors wrong." His voice had gone quiet again, as he glanced over his shoulder at the mist rising from the cliff, and the space beyond.

Now Lt. Brady had come up to Mr. Spock, to show him a report on her tricorder. The chief science officer quickly read through the charts and graphs and summary, before approaching the captain.

The interruption didn't seem to make much difference to the northerners, who were growling skeptically at Kirk's attempts to reason.

After a moment or two of hurried whispering, Kirk turned back to the uneasy mob.

"We must get underground immediately," he said, trying to keep things on a scientific note, even as broad, snarling growls issued from Spock's tricorder. "Great bursts of energy, from the sky, are very likely going to tear away the atmosphere away in the next few minutes."

"We cannot go back underground," one of the northerners argued, its scoffing call coming with a similar kind of abruptness. "We are meant for heaven, and not for the destruction that draws us out."

"It is your own god," Kirk disagreed, vehemently, "who brings this destruction!"

Perhaps inevitably, when he gave this accidental endorsement, the northerners began to cheer and raise their arms, and beat on their drum-logs again, with that huge variety of sticks and tubes. They were eager for something that could have no good outcome, and what should have been a time of careful preparation turned into a mindless celebration all at once.

"Are any of you," Kirk shouted over the racket, "so fully prepared, by merit or devotion, that you can overcome this destruction, that you yourselves, have brought upon your world? And to ascend," he looked up at the blue gas giant, receding out to the distant west, "to an even more hostile world, composed of violent winds and poisonous gases?"

"Prophesy," one of the northerners argued, his defiant howls coming out as flattened words in the tricorder. "It is prophesy of the good, transcending the limits of the narrow world, upon the hand of God."

"Prophesy!" the others shouted, as the southerners looked on from behind the riverbank, and Kirk noticed they maintained a respectful distance from the cliff.

"If your god," the captain began, against all his better judgment, and knowledge of diplomacy, "brings you only death and destruction… and a path to ruination, then that's… no god that I ever knew." A burst of white exploded off in the distance, drawing all the natives' attention away from him again.

And on that bitter, quiet note, he and the others started back west again, the way they'd come along the river. Now and then a new guiding light flared and sputtered noiselessly overhead, and even now these thousands of angry northerners could have swept the crewmen all the way back into the dizzying gorge. But the landing party's long walk to a more stable region continued, till they were about a kilometer from the banks. Across the river, some faithful southerners kept up. And then, even as Spock and Lt. Brady were raising their tricorders in surprise, the dry barren land shook again, with great violence.

Whether his remarks about false gods had done the trick, or if some primal instinct for survival had finally kicked-in, the great majority of northerners hurried away from the cliff till the shaking stopped.

"Anything back from the _Enterprise_?"

"Not yet," the Vulcan said. At last, he looked up, quizzically.

"What is it, Spock?"

"From our readings," Spock said, with similar hushed tones, "it would appear that multiple anti-matter explosions have been prepared up in orbit, to complete the 'apocalypse' down on this world."

"And somehow, the keepers have got their hands on enough anti-matter," McCoy said, over their shoulders, "to blast this world to bits?"

"Somehow, Bones," Kirk nodded.

"Obviously," the Vulcan said, after a respectful pause, "the largest source of concentrated anti-matter in this quadrant is the _Enterprise _itself."

"That's _not_ very comforting, Mr. Spock," McCoy said, drily.

"Indeed," the first officer said. "However, our chief concern now would be to repair to safer ground— in this case, beneath the surface, in that direction," Spock added, nodding toward a bend in the river where the forest seemed to reach northward.

"Then we're stranded here, in this region of space," Kirk sighed, as if it were the icing on the cake.

"Effectively, yes."

"But what about Vina?" Kirk asked, as they walked, "did she defeat their keeper? Otherwise, the northerners would have torn us to pieces."

"A logical assumption," Spock said. "And, one might assume, the _Enterprise _would not be in a position to undo the orbiting hazards."

"I just don't get it, McCoy said, trudging along behind Kirk and Spock —why can't Scotty just beam the anti-matter back on board?"

"Using the transporter would be too risky. It's too unstable," Kirk said, his eyes scanning the horizon ahead.

"Now wait a minute—so you're saying it's okay to disassemble you or me into hot plasma, and shoot us across hundreds of miles of space, and then just trust some damned machine to reassemble every single one of those atoms," McCoy said, striking a familiar tone. "But 'somehow,' it's not safe enough for your precious anti-matter, Mr. Spock? Is that it?"

"Essentially, yes, Doctor," the science officer answered, oblivious to any note of irony. The crowds of felines behind them, and across the river seemed to be growing, meanwhile, their eyes fixed on glowing white residue that hung above them in the sky, like strange lanterns.

"Then I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree," McCoy muttered, as they went along. But Spock decided to try again.

"The transporters' complex computer system can easily read relatively stable, organized organic life forms like ourselves, which are replete with predictable relationships, and then create a locus of matching, entangled particles at both the departure and destination points, to guide the way," he began.

"But the entire nature of anti-matter, in a universe largely opposed to it, requires an extravagant series of protective energy waves to organize and maintain it. Taking all of those wave-structures apart, along with the anti-matter, could easily cause an extremely powerful explosion on board the ship, or at the beam-down point, or at any point in-between, as each one of those protective layers is systematically disintegrated and carried away."

"Just doesn't seem fair, is all I'm saying, Mr. Spock."

Kirk, who had barely been listening at all to the familiar subject matter, finally chimed in.

"Beaming up or down is… practically… child's play, Bones. When you consider the danger of crossing the galaxy at warp eight," the captain said, "and how much we depend on the highly regulated cycle of explosions in our engines, it makes just the act of materializing—and de-materializing—of non-explosive material, seem… a lot less complicated."

"Well now you're just dissembling," McCoy said, strangely proud of his wordplay, in spite of the lavish explanations.

Another straight blue shot of phaser blasted far overhead, and another brilliant explosion flared quietly out along the dark horizon. Behind them, the northerners watched in reverential quiet, as each new star dawned, one by one.

"I assume," Kirk said, "Scotty is trying to detonate the most unstable bombs first."

"A likely scenario," the first officer nodded, "though we would be wise to seek cover, if an actual anti-matter explosion is detected."

"Seems odd," Kirk said quietly, "that they should go on burning so brightly, so long."

"It may only be another illusion, in the same category as what we've dealt with for much of the last standard week," Spock said, though his furrowed brow suggested he would have preferred a better explanation.

"In the meantime," Kirk nodded, "it does seem to be keeping the northerners in a state of order and obedience."

"Spock," the doctor asked, "why would Scottylaunch such monsters around this world, in the first place?"

"He may have been subjected to the keepers' power of illusion, in this case. However, we may learn more through our tricorders," the Vulcan said, diving back in to the little controls and the less-than-palm-sized viewing screen.

Brady and Atangze did likewise, holding up their scanners to the heavens above, instead of down to the unstable land beneath their boots. They were looking for any of the artificial bodies that still remained in orbit. Kirk and Hoblitzel kept their eyes scanning all around, as they went, under all the new suns above, spreading out to the horizon. But, still, the great gas giant would be setting in a few hours, and they would be obliged to seek shelter, against the cold.

"Interesting," Spock said, over the warbling hum of the tricorders.

"What is it?" Kirk and McCoy were both leaning over Spock's shoulders now.

"Externally, the remaining, intact satellites resemble neural dampening field generators," the first officer said, showing the other two commanders the wave patterns on the scanner screen. "From your own design, doctor."

McCoy was, as had happened every now and then, just a bit stunned at the congratulatory tone in the Vulcan's voice. He quickly recovered his skeptical nature, though.

"So you think Scotty is trying to restrain the telepathic powers of the keeper down here," McCoy said, looking from the little screen to the vast sky above, as if searching for unseen angels.

"It may have been his initial plan," Spock said.

"But it ended up as just another trap," Kirk said quietly.

"Mr. Scott may have been able to pursue his own experiment, though it seems this world's keeper somehow used the chief engineer's expertise against us all."

"And we're out of range, till they finish clearing up the mess," Kirk sighed, looking up at the sky again, and where he imagined the remaining satellites must be.

"It may also be that the signal from the _Enterprise _is blocked down here on the surface, or the signal from our communicators may be blocked, by interference up on board the ship," Spock said.

"Still, a noble experiment," the captain sighed. He looked around, and then climbed up the side of the bank, away from the water, to have a better look around.

He could see the northerners were following, from a reserved distance, even as the southerners paced along on their side of the river: the fur atop their shoulders bristling with tension. Now and then they paused to watch the landing party, and their enemies to the north, like hunters: keeping pace with them across the water.

"That's quite a flock," McCoy said, under his breath, as they traveled west to more stable ground. "I guess you would have made a hell of a preacher, Jim," McCoy said, looking back.

The stalking silence of the many leopard-like humanoids spread out behind him could have seemed strangely reverential, Kirk supposed. But their great blue "heaven" was now dipping into the west, amidst the strange lights in between. A swirl of black behind them likewise rose up in the east, like the inside of an empty cup.

"You have to get underground," he repeated, though he had the same doubts about their own safety. It wasn't just the advice of a passing stranger, any longer.

In response, there was only a strange, distant moaning of the felinoids, under all the cold new suns. Kirk turned and looked down the length of the river, till he saw B'lisbeh. He climbed down to the water's edge and weaved his way to her side, around all the other southerners who had managed to escape the riverboat before it tumbled over the edge.

"We have to get everyone underground," he insisted, barely even realizing Lt. Atangze had caught up and was holding the translating tricorder out in front of him.

"It is because of them our world destroys itself now," B'lisbeh said, her eyes blazing out of the dark behind her.

"I'm sure they're… coming to the same revelation themselves," Kirk said, remembering the lost and fearful expressions of the northerners.

"And now," B'lisbeh seemed to weigh the possibilities in her own furry head, "you suggest we close ourselves in, with our mad neighbors, against the disaster they bring upon us all. And share our food and water."

She looked at him, brow furrowed, as if, under the weight of her disdain, he might relent at once.

"Yes," Kirk said, gently. "That's exactly what I'm suggesting."

**Chapter Seventeen **

The elegant little yacht, with its updated computer, served her well.

Vina flew out to the uncharted regions, looking for far-flung systems and mysterious, ruined worlds that still orbited their dying suns. As she'd told her new/old boyfriend, though, they had to be worlds that hadn't already been plundered by fortune hunters, or sifted to the very last grain of sand by other, equally eager anthropologists before her.

Needless to say, the search grew wider and wider. The star-charts anthropologists used themselves, to stake out their territory, showed endless forays beyond the Federation like the paths of bees going back and forth, searching from flower to flower. Though, of course, here it was little ships weaving from planet to planet: for unknown histories and philosophies and even the occasional bizarre, scientific discovery.

Otherwise, she expected it would mostly just be a long quiet year or so, scanning and digging, and losing another year of one's life to dirt and blisters and loneliness. And watching some forgotten sun rising over an equally disregarded stretch of mountains, then setting again beyond some dry riverbed, or into an ocean or dry sea bed that long-since stopped making fish. And all the while she'd be making the Earth a buried past, in her own heart, with each new spade of dirt she turned. It sounded strangely wonderful to her.

There was more to it than that, of course. From her youthful voyages, on Starfleet research vessels, she knew the Universe was full of beauty and power still left to be discovered. It just took a while to brush away the dust.

But for the moment, she knew T'Lan was still with her, in her own way, busy and bright as any Vulcan, even light years away— as all the yacht's programs were running faster, and all her scans were reaching farther—and because T'Lan had actually completed the work of escaping from Earth, where she'd seemed destined to live out someone else's dreams.

When the time was right, two days later, she called-up a connection to the pirate ship and watched as the Vulcans gathered up its crew and captain, and her mustached boyfriend. To her palpable relief, T'Mara was allowed to come out last, without any armed guard. He had tried to stop her, but now it seemed he wouldn't be punished, for his interference, after all. For, as far as the Vulcans were concerned, time had resumed its preferred shape, more or less.

She tried to imagine what lay ahead: great things hidden, by the dark in between. Great deeds, great loves, great endurance under great hardship, recorded unto the end of things—left somewhere beneath the surface, for her to discover. This was her 'time travel,' and these were her alternate dimensions: the peaceful hieroglyphs, the scrolls, and even the ghosts of deep-space transmissions, broadcast and billowing out to into space, in thin, interstellar bubbles, or like ever-expanding sails filled with solar winds, that sent out the dreams of long-gone races to colonize her mind.

She finally found a good old world, absolutely desolate, and only two weeks away at warp one-point-five. And till she got there, her ship's scanners would build-up a profile of the place, beyond the obvious characteristics: the thin, dry atmosphere, the ghosts of oceans that boiled away, and perhaps a trace of some bygone people in the air. But for now, just scanning and planning…

And, perhaps, in this new time-line she'd meet some wonderful man. Or, man-like being. She didn't believe in destiny, anymore, but maybe some of the Vina's in some of the universes were bound to meet someone amazing. She realized that her whole life had now become a great second chance. Now she just had to be careful about what she filled it with.

"Captain," Atangze said, pointing up-river the next "morning." All the others in the landing party turned from where they were stretching off their rest, back on the surface, to follow the Nigerian's long arm to the horizon. The great blue gas giant was "rising" out of the east, and most of the cat people were already out in the open, as if they could barely stand to remain underground any longer, southerners forced to give up shelter to northerners, and each group crowding themselves into rabbit holes still separate, though all on the same side of the water now, and still in the midst of a very foolish apocalypse. All across the plain, in the early light, snorts of misty breath shot from their nostrils, like silent shouts before battle—as if another clash were already near.

Spock and Brady had their tricorders up just as quickly, and Kirk stepped over to the Vulcan's side, looking down into the scanner's screen.

"Trouble?"

"It appears to be crewmen from the_ Enterprise_: Ramook, Calvin and Cirron."

Kirk, feeling at once as if he were pacing down the decks of his own ship again, began walking briskly to meet them as they floated downstream on a river raft, three young science officers, two male, one female, with no sign of any other landing party in sight.

Kirk called their names, and waited till they reappeared around another bend.

A few minutes later, the two young ensigns stood reluctantly before their captain.

"Captain," the young Indian man began, looking very nervous, "Commander Scott ordered us back down in a shuttle, after our first visit—"

"Because he didn't think we had a complete report," Ensign Calvin interrupted, impatient with his awestruck partner on the investigation.

"And then something happened, and we were covered with blood," Cirron said.

"There was a keeper on our shuttle, we didn't realize it, and somehow it got on board… before dying."

"On board the _Enterprise_?" Kirk demanded.

"Before dying, sir," Calvin said, as if there was no point in getting up in arms about it.

"And that's when we were covered—I mean," Ramook said, "that's when everyone suddenly saw that we were covered in blood."

"From the keeper," Kirk nodded, as if he was actually making sense of all of this.

"Yes, sir," Cirron nodded, as if there was no point in wondering.

"And how did you come to be floating along the river like this," Kirk said, realizing he sounded angry, but imagining it would help to keep the answers short and simple.

"We came back down, and left the shuttle to find you, and then the shuttle was gone," Ramook said, looking down as if this were all just some sort of stupid mistake. "And then we just started walking this way, following your tricorder signal, and found a boat…"

When the captain turned around, he was unsurprised to find Spock and the others had come up from behind him, to listen as well.

"And," Kirk said, looking around on the ground as if for evidence of some crime, "whoever killed the local keeper… also took the second shuttle… for her own purposes."

"We don't know that it was Vina, Jim," McCoy said quietly.

"You've been rejuvenating her for a week, Bones," Kirk said, as if blaming him for his soft-heartedness. "Don't you think she'd be ready to put her own plans in action by now?"

"Her own plans?" McCoy looked astonished.

"She was an old woman," Kirk said, sharply, "in love with a dead man. Now she's young again, or young enough, and she's going to make things right, in her own mind, anyway. With her own mental powers, she learned on Talos!"

"Well you sure as hell didn't mind flirting with her, when she made you think she was young and beautiful!" The doctor had clearly reached his daily limit of accusations.

"In the meantime, gentlemen," Spock said quietly, "what do we do about this planet, and this culture? Not to mention the fact that we seem to be trapped down here."

Kirk looked around him, knowing there would be more quakes, and possibly worse to come.

"We're not trapped anymore, if the keepers are dead, and Vina's gone," he said, at last.

"We need to rig a dome shelter… for these people," he said, looking around, and then glancing up: as if beseeching the _Enterprises _to make things right. He drew his communicator, finally, and signaled the ship. The time when he could make a difference, by sheer force of his own personality, had passed. And overhead, night was reaching its bright full glow.

What looked like long white streamers began trailing out of the shuttle bay, at the aft-end of the _Enterprise_. And each streamer slowly untwisted to inflate into an airy refugee dome. Huge round floors spread out beneath, becoming solid like the wings of insects, rigid after emerging from the chrysalis.

But it was already obvious, to the landing party at any rate, the northerners would all have to end up in one or two of the domes, and the southerners, in their own. Perhaps, even if peace talks could be established. Till then, the enmity between the two would simply go on, till cooler heads prevailed.

"Any sign of the shuttlecraft?" Kirk looked bored and uneasy in the captain's chair, a sure sign that something unpleasant was about to happen. Mr. Scott had already called for an emergency delivery of anti-matter, and that left the _Enterprise _with nothing better to do than tend to their new refugees… up in heaven.

"Trail confirmed," Chekov said, from the helm, looking up at the viewscreen though the little vessel was already far, far away.

"Heading?"

"It appears to be heading back toward Rigel, sir," the helmsman answered, sounding surprised.

"Confirm," Kirk said, dumbfounded. He expected her to be on her way to confront the next keeper, on the next world unaware.

"Course confirmed, sir," Chekov replied, after checking his instruments all over again. Jim Kirk stood up, feeling at a loss. He walked a few steps toward the science station.

"Spock? Analysis?"

The Vulcan turned, unusually slowly, at the science station on the bridge. Overhead, above him, you could see a screen showing the refugee domes slowly inflating and being lined-up, to a stable cluster around the gigantic blue orb nearby. After they were each loaded with leopard-people, a shuttlecraft would be assigned to ferry them farther out to safety, if need be.

"As we know, Dr. Orwell was engaged in a very serious attempt to change the past, approximately 46 standard hours ago, in the ship's sickbay." Now he stood up, though his fingertips on one hand remained on the edge of the computer console.

"If I might… 'get to the point,' as Dr. McCoy has so often suggested," the Vulcan went on, "it may be quite important to consider that Captain Pike suffered his debilitating radiation exposure on a training mission in the Rigel system."

Kirk wasn't expecting that at all. He leaned back slightly from the red railing as, for a moment, it looked as if both senior officers might be reeling a bit.

"And you're saying she might have actually been changing _his _past, all along… when we thought she was changing her own."

"It is a possibility, Captain."

Kirk turned and rubbed the sides of his mouth with one hand, looking out at the stars beyond this system. A computer-generated dot blinked where the shuttle was detected, off in the invisible distance, but otherwise they seemed totally unable to stop her—if, indeed, there was any point. And something else stopped him from contacting Starfleet.

"Computer," Spock said aloud, drawing Kirk's attention again.

"_Working."_

"Read out criminal history of Commander Spock, chief science officer of the USS _Enterprise_."

There was a moment's chattering of circuits, before the computer spoke again.

"_There are currently fourteen incidents in which Commander Spock has been detained for criminal investigation—" _

That was a lot, Kirk supposed, for any other ship. It almost seemed that, being out on the fringes of known space all the time inevitably meant being on the fringes of someone else's law. The captain made a mental note to look up his own collected infractions on every little world, one day. After a stiff drink.

"Limit search to 'treason,' or 'mutiny.'"

"_No history of treason or mutiny in this file." _

Now both men were really stumped.

"Then she did… 'change the past,'" Kirk nodded quietly.

"Evidently, or the ship's computer would have maintained a record of my unlawful removal of the injured Captain Pike back to the dreamers of Talos IV, to be reunited with Dr. Orwell."

"I wonder what else she changed," Kirk muttered, looking around the bridge, at all the blinking lights and busy officers, for something he couldn't possibly detect.

"It is strangely beautiful," Lt. Uhura remarked, behind Kirk, at her station. Both males turned politely to listen to her own version of the tale—to a woman, ascertaining the motives of another woman.

"While we all thought she was totally absorbed in her own struggle," Uhura said, surprised and a little bit pleased or even amused, "she was really somehow saving Captain Pike, all along."

She turned back to the instruments, as if to privately blink away a tear, and then turned back to the captain. Her elegant fingers were pressing light pads, as if they worked a will of their own.

"I think I can get a current image of Captain Pike from subspace, sir."

"On screen, Lieutenant," Kirk said, feeling the gooseflesh rise on the back of his own neck. He and Spock turned to look over her head, where a random image of galactic space dissolved and was replaced by a picture of a handsome, silver-haired Chris Pike, standing in front of a rustic, wood fence.

In the distance, a large red barn stood partially obscured by Rigelian conifers. It suddenly seemed he had lived, and avoided that disfiguring training accident, to find his dream. To live a simple life, out on a farm in the countryside. "To go riding, every day." It sounded strangely enchanting to this captain of the _Enterprise_, as well.

Kirk nodded wistfully.

"And," the captain added, "when we thought we were making her young and beautiful, she was really manipulating the past, and doing the same thing… to her one true love. Making him whole and handsome. Avoiding that radiation blast, that ended his career… and sent him back to his final days on Talos."

Spock squinted his eyes, as if trying to sort out all these human motivations and subterfuges, and separate them from sentiment, as the communications officer turned back to her console. Kirk stole a glance at the first officer, searching the Spock's face for any sign of gladness. But, if it was there at all, Spock had done an almost perfect job of hiding his apparent sense of relief.

"And," Kirk smiled playfully, to the Vulcan, "your own criminal record got 'scrubbed' in the bargain!" He shook his head and stepped back down to the center seat, smiling at the strange twist of fate. "I guess they'll never take you alive, Mr. Spock…"

But the Vulcan had never heard that particular expression from Earth's criminal underworld, and only registered the slightest, politest mystification.

For the next week, they ferried leopard-people up from the moon, to the refugee domes in shuttlecraft and by transporter, and waited for new anti-matter in safe magnetic bottles from Starfleet, by dreadnaught. And the initial report on those brainwave-dampening satellites—the ones Scotty had actually intended to put in orbit here—seemed favorable.

At Kirk's recommendation, there was no pursuit of the fierce blond woman, on her own way back to the heart of Federation space.

And when they'd finally put the last of the southerners in three domes, and the last of the northerners in three more domes, along with a dozen ensigns in each dome, Kirk finally had a moment to go back and look at the files on Captain Pike (Ret.), once again.

There he stood, by that same rustic, wooden fence, before those graceful fir trees, and the red barn in the distance. And Vina was there by his side: two smiling old people, grinning like children, under the Rigelian sun.

Just then (fifty-five years ago) in the absolute stillness of a long space-voyage, Vina Orwell got a desperate warning on the instrument panel of her little space yacht, as she headed out to the frontier. She touched the light-pad with a strange sense of panic, as she passed through an old-style radio transmission.

"_This is the captain of the Earth vessel Antujan—we are in urgent need of assistance after crash landing on an uncharted planet. If you can hear the sound of my voice, we are desperate for help—repeat—" _

But this time a little voice, strangely familiar, and from the very center of her being, told her quite clearly, and very firmly: '_just forward the message to the proper authorities. You're on your own path now.' _

She touched a few buttons, and watched the message as it was re-routed through the computer, back to Vulcan, before continuing on her way.

It gave her a strange sense of freedom: knowing, at last, her future was truly her own.

22

22

_By Richard T. Green_


End file.
